Vintage report: Brunello di Montalcino 2012
Richard Baudains assesses the most recent vintage releases from this prime territory at the heart of Tuscany, recommending 21 Brunello 2012 buys, plus his top picks of the 2011 Riservas and Rosso di Montalcinos from 2015
Richard Baudains assesses the latest vintage release, along with the 2011 Riservas and 2015 Rosso di Montalcino, recommending 35 top wines
ThERE is NoT a corner of Tuscany that does not grow sangiovese, but Montalcino is special. its wines have the quintessential varietal character that comes from the exclusive use of the native grape and a terroir capable of producing wines of prodigious ageing potential. in Biondi santi it has one of italy’s truly iconic estates, but also admirable standards of quality in general. These are the constants. The variable – the difference between great, normal or possibly disappointing – is the vintage. This is why the annual presentation of the new vintages by the producers’ consorzio is one of the major events of the tasting calendar.
in February this year we saw wines from 2012 in Brunello, the 2011 Brunello Riservas and the Rosso di Montalcino 2015s.
‘Brunello 2012 is a “choose-withcare” vintage in which terroir differences played a determining role’
Brunello 2012
Brunello 2012 is harder to generalise about. The vintage won the consorzio’s top, five-star rating, but it divides opinion. My own view is that 2012 shows both the positives and the downsides of a hot, dry vintage. it is a ‘choose with care’ vintage in which terroir differences played a determining role. Wines from cooler sites have much better balance; those from hotter slopes can be tough and alcoholic. it is certainly a powerful vintage. The wines are not easy to drink now, but the best have the prerequisites for long-term ageing.
The summer of 2012 was hot and very dry, with no rainfall at all from July to midSeptember, a situation exacerbated in August by three days of scirocco, the hot, dry wind from the Sahara, which not only raised temperatures by day but kept them high at night. At the Baricci estate they resorted to spraying water in the vineyards in the early hours of the morning to try to give some respite to the vines. ‘I couldn’t say 2012 is a five-star vintage,’ says Francesco Baricci; ‘there was just too much drought stress.’
On the other hand, Riccardo Fratton, winemaker at San Polo, has no doubts about the five-star quality. ‘It is true that 2012 was hot, but we had some rain before we picked and that freshened the vines. The wines are closed now, but they will come out in time.’
Probably both producers are right. The defining features of the vintage are depth of colour, massive extract and high alcohol. When this all comes together without losing fruit aromas, the result is a big, chunky mouthful of Brunello. The variables are the Below: typically Tuscan view from Poggio Antico, to the southwest of the hilltop town of Montalcino
‘The 2011 Brunello Riservas have weighty concentration, but can appear a bit clumsy and onedimensional’
ripeness of the tannins and the acidity levels. Two factors made the difference to the overall quality and balance of the wines: the date of picking and the site. At Poggio di Sotto they picked early, at the end of August, and made a wine with 13.5% alcohol on the label and an elegance that’s rare for the vintage. Silvio Nardi’s Poggio Doria single-vineyard selection was picked much later, but benefited from its high, cool location in the far northwest of the DOCG zone to produce a Brunello with tight, ripe tannins and complex aromas.
The downside of 2012 is that many wines lack these qualities. Aromas are often baked and leathery, extract is huge but the tannins are hard and underripe, and the palates have a very peppery quality and a flat finish. Whether the wines will soften with age is an open question. In many respects they recall the 2006s – another hot and powerful vintage which started life tough, and in my experience remains tough and unyielding today.
Brunello Riserva 2011
With very few exceptions, the 2011 Brunello Riserva category is not in general an automatic choice. There has to be a special reason for ageing a Sangiovese-based wine for five years – basically old vines on a superb site – and the vintage has to justify it. 2011 was on the whole not one of those vintages. The wines are soft and round and very smooth, but without the stucture for the long haul. If you like the 2011 style, you probably need to look no further than the straight (non-Riserva) ‘annata’ wines, which are drinking well now.
Stefano Colombini, Fattoria dei Barbi
Biondi Santi expects to release a 2011 Riserva, which can definitely be taken as a point in favour of the vintage. Another fan is Giuseppe Gorelli at Le Potazzine. He has only ever bottled a Brunello Riserva in two other vintages (2004 and 2006), but he will be bringing out a 2011. These two estates appear however to be in the minority. The majority of the producers at the consorzio’s presentation did not show a Riserva, and those that did bottled limited quantities.
A warm spring in 2011 brought budding forward by up to two weeeks, but then a rainy summer restored the normal growth cycle. What determined the style of the vintage was the blast of heat that lasted from mid-August through to the harvest. Thanks to the reserves of water accumulated through the first part of the summer there was no drought stress to speak of, but in the run-up to harvest acidity levels plummeted.
When the wines came out they were soft and fleshy with attractive glossy textures, but often lacking in structure and complexity. The consensus at the time was ‘nice for early drinking, not for keeping’. Giulio Salvioni split his production 50-50 between Rosso and Brunello, as he was not confident of the ageing potential of the vintage.
The Riserva wines that are out now are not always completely convincing. They have weighty concentration, but can appear a bit clumsy and one-dimensional. Given the availability of the great 2010 Riservas and of the 2011 annatas, the 2011 Riservas would not be at the top of my shopping list.
‘2015 is possibly the best Rosso di Montalcino vintage of the last 10 years’
Rosso di Montalcino 2015
Rosso di Montalcino is theoretically made for early drinking. You get full-on Sangiovese character in the freshness of the fruit and aromas, and in crisp tannins not over-refined by long ageing; but also, when the vintage is right, the body that lifts the wines to another level of seriousness. The 2015 ticks all these boxes. It is a vintage which offers great drinking now and in the medium term, and also represents excellent value for money.
Stefano Colombini, owner of Fattoria dei Barbi, describes 2015 as ‘possibly the best
vintage of the last 10 years’. July had the highest temperatures ever recorded in Tuscany but at Poggio di Sotto they make the point that the weather did not follow the pattern of a typical hot vintage at Montalcino.
Although temperatures were at times extreme, there was also well-distributed rain throughout the growing season, which meant there was little or no drought stress and the grapes came in with great natural sugar-acid balance. Yields were good and quality high.
After a disappointing 2014, this was the vintage producers had been waiting for. The Catch-22 is that the quality of the grapes was so good that there may be less Rosso available, with estates opting to put a higher proportion of the production into their Brunello. Salvioni, for example, is releasing no Rosso at all from the 2015 vintage.
Sub-zone variables emerge less strongly in good vintages at Montalcino, while differences in winemaking style tend to become more apparent. This is particularly true for the Rosso category. Among the 2015s, the spectrum goes from juicy, no-wood versions through more complex wines made with short ageing in big traditional barrels, to rich and concentrated barrique-aged wines.
In the latter style, Siro Pacenti’s all-new oak Rosso showcases the great fruit quality of the vintage. In the more classsic vein, Baricci, Crocedimezzo, Le Potazzine, Sesti and Terre Nere, to cite only a few from my long list of high-scoring wines, made Rossos that fit perfectly into the Montalcino matrix as slightly scaled versions of a great terroir wine. Complex and vibrant, full-bodied but not overweight, they are ready now but will drink even better in two to three years’ time.