Brunello di Montalcino
Italy's Best Wine

The "Brunello di Montalcino" (brew NEL lo), surely has to be considered, Tuscany's top wine, and it's entirely made with Sangiovese grapes.

Brunello is the local and unofficial name of Sangiovese, which has found its perfect habitat in the surroundings of Montalcino, where grapes ripen more and better than else where, giving the wine an unique color, body and richness.

There are also some Sangiovese clones, that grow in this area, which evolved greatly with the particular environmental conditions that can be found here. The best of these clones were isolated by a certain Clemente Santi (mid 1800's), in order to make real quality age worthy wines.

Wines that became stunning under the reign of Clemente's grandson: Ferruccio Biondi-Santi, during the second half of the 19th century.

Today we can find about 200 Brunello producers, in the area and most of them are small farmers. It is also considered one of the two Italian top wines. The other one is Barolo.

Brunello di Montalcino was also the first Italian wine to obtain the DOCG status (1980). Anyway we must point out that production is quite small and it is limited to about 330,000 cases a year.

Aging and Ageability

The Brunello has always been a wine for aging. In fact good vintages can age finely for 50 years. The severe DOCG regulations state that Brunello must age at least 4 years and the Brunello riserva (made with producer's best grapes) at least five. Two of these 4-5 years must be spent in oak barrels or casks.

Traditional Brunello producers , age their wines at least three years in larger casks, obtaining more austere wines, while there are also other modern producers that prefer aging the wines in smaller French oak barrels, which adds a certain fruitiness to the taste. Anyway, all Brunello's reach their best after ten years of aging.

There are also differences between the various vintages. Usually there are about five great vintages per decade, but the 1990's has been an outstanding decade with eight above average vintages and especially 1990, 1995, 1997 were superb. These outstanding vintages, of course have a high price to pay for.

Montalcino (mon tal CHEE no) is a lovely medieval town situated on a hilltop (547m above sea level) at about 30 miles southeast of Siena, and is Tuscany's second wine region, in terms of importance (after Chianti Classico) and the number one thanks to its quality wines: Brunello di Montalcino.

The Montalcino wine district is composed by vineyards in the hilly wooded area surrounding the town. A perfect climate is guaranteed by the tempering influence of the sea (at southwest) and the sheltering effect of Mount Amiata (at southeast).

Soil quality varies from end to end in the district, and also from different altitude levels. So all these perfect environmental conditions mixed together create the finest zone in the world for the Sangiovese grape.

Recommended Brunello Producers