Brunello - Beauty and the Beast

3 planes in 3 days. The jet set lifestyle is starting to feel like the jet lag lifestyle. But its been in a very worthy and enjoyable cause.. Hopefully by tasting and, eventually importing, some delightful wines with incredibly strong green credentials, I have been able to offset this rather nasty carbon footprint! One such wine is Etna rosso and its crus from the Terre Nere estate. A truely remarkable and marginal vineyard area of rugged beauty,rooted on the rocky, scorched soils of Etna's north facing slopes. Their 2008s, now in bottle, must be saught out, they are totally sublime, whilst the trickier 2009 vintage still yielded an unforgettable prephylloxera cuvee. It goes to show there is no substitute for good vines, planted in the right place and tended with care.

Anyway, onto Brunello di Montalcino. It is a wine of many sides, as indeed, is the vineyard area. Many people's preconceptions is of a wine that must be massive, heady and raisiny but this does not have to be the case.
It may never be a shrinking violet but I can say that over the last 2 days I have tasted pure, enormously drinkable expressions of Sangiovese. Le Ragnaie was one of them, at 550 metres the highest vineyard in Montalcino, as airy and beautiful as the vineyard from which it is made. Siro Pacenti was another, from vineyards on the north and south side of Montalcino, there is a very gentle modern sheen to this but its beauty, balance and depth is crystal clear. A real treat, too, was Soldera, as elegant and complete a Brunello as you will find. One cuvee is made, a riserva, produced from organically farmed vines, fermented with natural yeasts and aged in large oak vat for 5 years.

The Brunello vintage to be released this year will be 2006, a vintage that has produced some really complete and composed wines that mix structure, ripe elegant fruit and freshness. A very good year indeed that should prove most ageworthy.