Agony and ecstasy
Posted on 26 February 2010
My last two days in Tuscany have been devoted, as every year, to the region’s premier red wine: Brunello di Montalcino. Brunello for many is the king of Tuscan and Italian wine. But today the emperor has no clothes. The Brunello scandal that has been ongoing (without a very clear conclusion; see reports e.g. Vino Wire) since March 2008 has done some considerable harm to the appellation. Leading producers were charged with counterfeiting their wines by blending in unauthorised grape varieties (Brunello is required by law to be 100% Sangiovese). The DOCG rules have since been reconfirmed and a stricter control regime has been established but one of the scandal’s outcome is that today, Montalcino is deeply divided with producers, journalists and consumers entrenched on sharply antagonistic positions.
Brunello’s other problem is uneven quality. As usually when a wine-producing zone expands from 1 to 10 in a few years’ time, there’s a combination of erratic plantings in poor locations, lack of expertise of producers (many of which are investors with no background in wine) and a chase after a flashy international style that contributes to Brunello’s disappointing level as a whole.
2005 that we’ve tasted this year is a case in point. It is by no means a bad vintage, having produced some reasonably deep, aromatic, mid-term-structured Sangiovese wines elsewhere in Tuscany (especially in Chianti). But in Montalcino almost everything has been done to make 2005 worse than it could have been. Late harvesting in a vintage whose primary characteristic was freshness and lightness; overextraction in a vintage with naturally tight tannins; overoaking in an appellation that needs oak less than any other; and, to be honest, an excessive period of wood ageing that exasperated a lightweight vintage and made for the fact that upon release, many wines are already evolved and unfresh.
I’ve tasted some 90 Brunellos from 2005 and there are very few I’d recommend to buy at the current prices. The overperformers, unsurprisingly, include mostly classic estates with a long track record of excellence such as Costanti and Salvioni. Fuligni, Franco Pacenti, Caprili, La Velona, Silvio Nardi‘s expensive Manachiara, Il Marroneto, and Banfi’s Poggio alle Mura were also good, and I’ve felt 2005 is a vintage where modern-oriented producers often did an above-average job, especially as several of them have reduced the amount of new wood compared to 2001, 2003 and 2004. Salicutti, for example, used to be an extracted new-oak Brunello a couple of years ago while today it delivered one of the vintage’s successes with good body and structure but excellent balance too. Pian dell’Orino and La Fuga are other examples.
Still, it has generally been a rather grim tasting, with many wines quite below their historical average quality: sore disappointments have included Campogiovanni, Ciacci, Lambardi, Lisini, Mastrojanni, Siro Pacenti, La Poderina, and Sesti which are usually among the Brunellos I really like.
The show was saved by private visits to a few dedicated estates where I was offered vertical tastings of several Brunello vintages. Andrea Costanti showed a fantastic stylistic continuity ranging from 1995 to 2009; highlights, apart from an extremely promising 2007 barrel sample, included the 2001 Riserva and two overdelivering hot vintages: 2003 and 1997, which are quite superior to their peers from other estates. And the estate of Gianni Brunelli treated us to a rare retrospective spanning 1993 through 2005: I delighted in the sweet, elegant 1996 and in the brilliantly lively 2003 but the three Riserva bottlings stole the show: the 2004 is young as hell but has superlative balance and fantastic quality of fruit; the 2001 is both sweet and mineral-saline and delivers plenty of sensual excitement without being remotely maturing (tasted from magnum); and the 1997 took a good hour of airing to unfold fully, revealing excellent density and plenty of energy from this rather patchy vineyard. This is why I still care about Brunello, and it might well become the king of Italian wine again one day.
Disclosure
This trip to Tuscany (flights, hotels, meals and transfers) was paid for by the consorzios of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino.