(Il BORRO, JAN. 10, 2011) I have been tasting and drinking a lot of Brunello di Montalcino over the last two weeks in Tuscany as I have been working on a compressive report on the superb 2006 vintage. It only reaffirms why I love great Sangiovese. It’s like great Pinot Noir. There’s nothing like it.
A great Sangivoese — the appellation of Brunello di Montalcino remains the Holy Grail for the grape – has such complexity and depth. It’s not obvious and in your face. It seduces you with its beauty and shyness. It dazzles you with its richness and liveliness. It challenges you with its depth of fruit yet delicateness.
The 2006 Brunello di Montalcinos are classic Sangioveses in every sense of the word. “These Brunellos are what Sangiovese is all about,” explained Giacomo Neri, the owner of the fantastic Brunello winery of Casanova di Neri. “The 2006s have such great balance. Everything is in perfect proportion. Everything is working perfectly together from the rich fruit, strong tannins and bright acidity.”
I wrote about it in my last blog. I am so impressed how the many excellent 2006 Brunellos – and I tasted more than 140 in blind tastings in Tuscany – change in your glass with air. They seem to even get darker and richer in the glass. I am not joking. I can only think of one type of wine that does that when I think to the 30 years I have been a critic – great red Burgundy.
I was tasting the 2006 Casanova di Neri Tenuta Nova Brunello di Montalcino with Giacomo Neri before lunch yesterday, and we both couldn’t believe how the color changed from a bright violet to a darker purple. I decanted the young Brunello, gave it a good swirl, and it was like letting a genie out of the bottle. The fresh flowers and dark fruits with minerals and wet earth just flowed after filling the glasses from the decanter. The palate was dense and fruity yet structured and reserved. I just had to sip the wine time and time again to try to better understand it.
“That is the sign of a great wine,” said Giacomo, as he smelled and drank his young Brunello with me. “It’s a wine with so much depth and richness yet it is reserved. It has a long, long life ahead of it.”
Lamberto Frescobaldi said to me yesterday during a dinner I invited him to that he believe that 2006 Brunellos are the most perfect expression of Sangiovese his family has seen in bottle since they began making wines. That might be a little bit of an overstatement, since the Frescobladis have been making wines in Tuscany for about 700 years. But it still means that 2006 Brunellos are very special.
Maybe that’s why I scored two wines perfect 100 pointers! And there are dozens that I scored 95 points or more.
One of the best comments I have heard over the least week on 2006 Brunello came from the excellent winemaker Giancarlo Pacenti of Siro Pacenti, who is releasing a new single vineyard Brunello from the north side of Montalcino called Pelagrilli: “The 2006s have all the excellence of the top modern vintages of Brunello. They have the richness of 1997, they have the tannic structure of the 1999, and they have freshness of the 2001.”
I see his point, but I still think that the 2006 vintage for Brunello is the new benchmark for the region, just like 1997 was more than a decade ago. Viticulture and winemaking has changed so much in Tuscany in the last decade, and the more than 220 grape growers who bottle their wines have been at the forefront in growing the best grapes.
“We can talk about our new cellars or how we make wine, but in the end it is all about the quality of the grapes,” said Andrea Mantengoli of La Serena, a small Brunello producer who makes outstanding wines from organic grapes. His 2006 was fabulous. “You have to start with great quality grapes to make great quality wines.”
Added Vincenzo Abbruzzese, the owner of Valdicava and one of the great vine growers in Italy: “We can’t compare how we are working now than before. We have spent so much more time in the vineyards. The vines are in balance now and they are making small crops of fabulous gapes. This gives us the excellent quality we are looking for.”
Me tasting Brunellos at Valdicava winery over the weekend with owner Vincenzo Abbruzzese.
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