Two scores of ninety-seven, from Robert Parker and from Vinous, in a five-star vintage. Lively and springy, with rose petal, cardamom and powdered liquorice. Eight bottles left.
Bright garnet. The nose is now fully developed and moves between two registers: rose petal, cardamom and powdered liquorice on one side, smoky minerals, dark soil and a camphor edge on the other. On the palate the wine is sprightly and springy, with snappy red fruit lifted by a fresh acidity, and tannins entirely absorbed into the whole. A saline, mineral thread runs through the wine and makes the finish savoury rather than sweet. Drinking window 2024 to 2040, so at its finest now. Around 18 degrees, with roast red meat or game. Of this vintage we have eight bottles left.
In Montalcino, grandparents call their granddaughters potazzine, after the small, brightly coloured birds of the Tuscan countryside. That is what their grandmother called Viola and Sofia, the daughters of owner Gigliola Giannetti — and the estate grew in step with them: Viola was born in 1993, the founding year, and when Sofia arrived in 1996 two more hectares took the total to five.
The Brunello is made traditionally here: a spontaneous fermentation of some forty days on the estate's own wild yeasts, without temperature control, followed by more than three years in casks of 30 and 50 hectolitres of Slavonian oak from Garbellotto. Unfiltered.
The producer calls 2015 one of the most exciting vintages of the new millennium. It is also the year he made a Riserva — the fourth ever.
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