Written by: Walter Speller | Jancis Robinson
February 28, 2022
Keep the top wines and enjoy the surprising others soonish, says Walter. See the !rst half of his extremely comprehensive tasting notes in Brunello 2017 – A to L. The rest follow tomorrow. His detailed assessment of the 2016 Riservas after that.‘If we are talking economics, it simply is not an option to declassify Brunello to Rosso di Montalcino’, Lorella Carresi, PR and communications manager at giant Ban! told me last month during my week-long stay in Montalcino to taste the just-released 2017 vintage. Due to its extraordinarily long ageing requirement of !ve years for the ‘normal’ and an additional one for the Riserva, Brunello is always the last in the line of Italy’s top wines to be released on the market and hence I found myself revisiting the record- breaking dry and hot 2017 vintage yet again.In 2017 severe frost in spring and prolonged, grape-shrivelling heat and drought in the summer had resulted in a vintage lacking both réclame and quantity. Temperatures had been high from the beginning of the growing cycle and by July the vines were at breaking point due to hydric stress. Some relief came at the end of July with several spells of rain, as well as incidental hailstorms. September was the game-changer, with considerable variation between day and night temperatures which continued for 20 days right up to the harvest.But 2017’s reputation is such that producers have been criticised for having made Brunello at all. It was Carresi who pointed out the simple fact that the international market is not keen on Rosso di Montalcino and therefore it just doesn’t make sense for most producers to wholesale declassify a vintage to then struggle to sell the result. And, equally importantly, most importers as well as their clients do not like the interruption of a whole year in the distribution of a wine as popular as Brunello di Montalcino.No doubt the considerable variation in quality between producers is to blame for Rosso’s low popularity, combined with the fact that the name does not convey the same strong message as, say, Langhe Nebbiolo, a similar ‘second’ wine but one which enjoys huge international success. What is needed to change Rosso di Montalcino’s fortunes is an increase in overall quality.I’d like to suggest a subtle name change too, from Rosso di Montalcino to Montalcino Rosso. It might seem insigni!cant, but it does draw attention immediately to the wine’s origin and away from its much less distinguished colour. Producers seem to agree something is wrong with Rosso di Montalcino, and more than a few opt out entirely while preferring to label their wine Toscana Sangiovese or, in extreme cases, the lowest of the low, Vino Rosso, which doesn’t allow for either variety or the vintage to be mentioned on the label.Whatever the case, after having tasted over 170 Brunello 2017s I am glad that producers ignored the critics, because the overall result is remarkable, with many wines defying 2017’s image as an exceptionally hot and dry year.’For us 2017 is not a lesser vintage than 2015 or 2016′, Laura Gray, pictured at the top of this article, told me in January. Together with her Italian husband, Marco Sassetti, Scottish-born Gray runs Il Palazzone. She is the estate’s general manager and Sassetti is responsible for the entire agricultural operation including the woods surrounding the vineyards. His work includes chasing wild boar out of the vineyards at night and foraging mushrooms. ‘It is like having a druid on the payroll’, is how Gray described her husband’s role.'[In 2017] we reached the moment in which Sangiovese had the perfect physiological as well as phenological ripeness.’ In normal years they tend to delay harvest as much as possible. ‘We may have the right alcohol level, but the pips may not be ripe or the skins need more time. But we had to pick early in 2017 because things were not getting any better, and the grapes were just right.’ Gray pointed out they had the freedom to use only the best grapes. Their merciless search for the best quality almost regardless of the cost has been Il Palazzone’s core philosophy since the tiny 5-ha (12-acre) estate was acquired by Richard Parsons, once chairman and CEO of Time Warner, with a weakness for Brunello. Because of health problems he recently sold the estate to Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia, and his wife Kirsten.In 2017 Il Palazzone produced neither a Riserva nor their single-vineyard Due Porte, from barely one hectare of old vines at 540 m (1,770 ft). ‘We pick this normally in October. Due Porte is sophisticated and complex, and we [Gray and winemaker Paola Martino] made the di”cult decision to blend it into the normal Brunello.’ Many Brunello producers took similar decisions, providing a compelling reason for Brunello lovers not to overlook 2017 in general and Il Palazzone’s in particular.Bianca Ferrini, Carlo Ferrini’s daughter, is in charge of her father’s Montalcino estate Giodo and its spectacular, secluded vineyards in Sant’Angelo in Colle, with stunning views of Monte Amiata. It doesn’t need a lot of imagination to see that vines planted on what was once a cool slope of shrubs feel at home here. One of a growing number of Rosso di Montalcino refuseniks, Giodo produces an IGT Toscana instead, Quinta, from a plot of young Brunello vines. Quinta is not exactly cheap, but possesses what many Rossos do not: sheer class while stylistically inching pretty close to Brunello.Bianca Ferrini didn’t seem impressed with the challenges 2017 posed. I wanted to know if the harvest time had to be pulled forward. ‘Not really’, came the succinct answer. ‘We always harvest in the !rst 10 days of September.’ While 2017 was no exception to what appears an iron rule here, a very strict selection was made. The result, a suave and elegant 2017 Brunello, has the stamp of smooth operator Carlo Ferrini written all over it.Making a relatively small vintage even smaller, selection has been a key strategy in 2017 out of sheer necessity. Luigi Peroni, general director at La Fiorita, recalled quite a few instances of sunburnt fruit. Several of the La Fiorita vineyards are in what is considered one of the hottest parts of Montalcino, in Castelnuovo dell’Abate near the landmark abbey of Sant’Antimo, but holdings in higher parts of Montalcino in Sant’Angelo in Colle and Castelgiocondo have helped to balance out the impact of the heat on the resulting wine.La Fiorita’s owner is Natalie Oliveros, a former adult-entertainment actress and ex-wife of Daniel Oliveros, one of the owners of Royal Wine Merchants in Manhattan. Oliveros introduced Natalie to Roberto Cipresso, a personal friend and consultant oenologist, who at the time was one of La Fiorita’s owners. With Cipresso Natalie Oliveros launched a range of wines while acquiring a major share in La Fiorita. Apparently conflicting points of view led Oliveros to buy up the estate including the entire Cipresso share recently, and consequently embark on building one of Montalcino’s most eye-catching cellars.Her architectural vision can best be described as ‘Montalcino meets Miami’ with the softest of pink toning the entire cellar and dramatically contrasting with the phalanx of grey concrete tanks. There’s an imposing ceiling of sculpted squares, large oak casks and a glass-encased lift for those who do not want to climb up the sweeping staircase. At regular intervals a !ne mist of water is automatically sprayed from invisible wall dispensers to create the room’s perfect humidity level. The tasting room’s terrace, which could easily accommodate a reception for 100 people, o$ers one of the most breathtaking views in the whole of Montalcino.All of this should not distract from the fact that Oliveros is serious about wine, having taken on board Sangiovese expert Maurizio Castelli as a consultant in 2016, which sealed the Oliveros take-over. The subsequent change of style is already visible and La Fiorita is now attracting attention that goes beyond any interest in an ex-adult-movie star. The 2017 Brunellos show o$ Castelli’s immense skills with Sangiovese, but they also sum up the conundrum that is the 2017 vintage: concentrated, sumptuous and generous, but not remotely ready.Do note that I am referring to the top wines when I say that 2017 is not a vintage for immediate consumption, contrary to what is expected of a hot vintage. Most striking about this vintage, and a phenomenon I also observed with the top 2017 Barolos, is that their generous fruit seduces you into thinking they are ready, while in fact the best are embryonic. The same goes for many Brunellos with their immediate fruit and equal masses of tannins, but the real character of 2017 will reveal itself only after prolonged bottle age.Talking to producers about 2017 regularly triggered the comparison with 2011, the last hot vintage before 2017 came along and for many an experience as traumatic as 2003, the !rst of the really scorching years. Giuseppe Gorelli, ex co-owner of Le Potazzine (pictured above), who now has set up camp on Montalcino’s north side a stone’s throw from Canalicchio di Sopra, did not mince his words while describing 2017. ‘It was di”cult, almost as di”cult as 2011, also a year with a very hot and dry summer and with little ventilation. Small berries, little juice and little elegance.’From the very beginning Gorelli has set his heart on elegance and freshness when in 1993 he and his then-wife purchased land where previously only cows had grazed. Considered too cool to ripen grapes, at 500 m (1,640 ft), Le Potazzine was soon producing elegantBrunellos that began to attract international attention. After having gone their separate ways, Gorelli found a vineyard near the Montosoli cru which he managed to hire.’At !rst I had doubts whether I could make wines here as elegant as those of Le Potazzine’, Gorelli confessed, because the vineyard is at 350 m (1,150 ft) rather than 500 m. His doubts turned out to be unfounded, perhaps partly thanks to its northern exposure. His 2018 and 2019 Rosso di Montalcino are nothing short of spectacular, setting high expectations for Gorelli’s 2018 Brunello to be released next year.’My vision is an elegant wine, but 2017 was just too hot to achieve this.’ But with the stewed flavours of many a 2011 Brunello still in mind, I asked why the 2017s are the complete opposite. ‘You learn from the di”culty and you try to !nd a solution’, was the answer. According to Gorelli, in the hotter, lower parts of Montalcino, where producers were more penalised by the heat, ponds have been constructed for emergency irrigation. ‘You won’t see dried grapes any more because the vines now get help’, Gorelli explained. ‘And the agronomy has changed. When in the past very low yields were the norm, nowadays they are more generous.”Compared with 2011 we weren’t overwhelmed by the heat, which was intense’, Alberto Passeri, who runs the La Gerla estate told me. Until 1976 the estate, then called Colombaio, belonged to the Biondi Santi family and was the prime source of the Biondi- Santi Riservas. After its acquisition, Milanese entrepreneur Sergio Rossi rebranded the estate La Gerla.Passeri explained that during the summer of 2011 temperatures climbed up to well over 40 °C (104 °F) during the day, and with over 30 °C (86 °F) at night there was little cooling o$. This relentless heat exhausted the vines and burned the grapes. ‘In 2017 there were two occasions in August when it rained and there were strong temperature variations at the beginning of September which changed everything.’ The di$erence in harvest dates illustrates by how much: ‘in 2011 we began the harvest in Castelnuovo dell’Abate on 24 August. In 2017 we began the harvest on 18 September. The real heat was in 2003 and 2011. In 2017 we were able to manage it.’In recent years it has almost become the norm to talk about a ‘north/south divide’ in Montalcino, especially in hot vintages. At between 350 and 550 m (1,150–1,800 ft) the north of Montalcino is the highest part of the denomination and temperatures are generally lower than in the south around Castelnuovo dell’Abate and Sant’Angelo Scalo. In the past the southern, lower part of the denomination was much more prized becauseof the full ripeness the grapes achieved and the richness of the resulting wines at a time when the international market clamoured for this style.Over the last couple of years, triggered by global warming, a trend for elegant, lighter styles of red wines has emerged and now the north part is considered superior. However, the truth, as always, is a little more complicated. Many producers have holdings in both parts, especially those who acquired vineyards in the south to achieve a richer style of wine than their northern holdings could achieve. Nowadays, however, many producers based in the south are trying to get their hands on a slice of the cooler north. Spread-out holdings like this can help to mitigate the e$ects of hot as well as cool vintages and blends play a major part in this.2017’s shortcomings The miracle of the 2017 Brunellos is that literally none is a$ected by the heat in a way you notice it in the glass. Stewed-fruit flavours are rare, while throughout acidity levels are impressively high, sometimes even leading to tartness. It might be that in these cases tartaric acid was added but several winemakers denied this had been a wholesale practice in 2017. Admittedly these are di$erent regions, but I remember well a Barolo producer con!ding in me that local sales of tartaric acid had gone through the roof in 2017.What characterises all but the very best 2017 Brunellos is that they are ready from the moment they are released. Their sumptuous fruit and good acidity allow for immediate consumption, and because of that I expect the 2017s will do especially well in restaurants.Pleasant as most 2017s may be, quite a few are de!ned by a lack of complexity, perhaps caused by the absence of a slow ripening phase at the end of the growing cycle. While producers report harvest dates that were well into September, the total growing cycle may have been interrupted when the vines shut down during the summer heat and never completely caught up after that.Shorter-than-usual skin maceration times to avoid extracting tannins that might not have been entirely ripe could be another reason for the simpler Brunellos I came across. Harsh tannins are seen by many as the common denominator of this vintage, but in my opinion this is not the case. Dry and rather !rm tannins, sometimes tough but hardly ever astringent, are especially prominent in wines that seem rather light in fruit and stu”ng, lacking in proper depth. This lack of depth of fruit enhances the lack of complexity and makes the tannins stand out.Quite a few wines look more like Rosso di Montalcino but, nevertheless, carry the lofty name of Brunello on the label, and now you know why. What has taken its toll in this very di”cult vintage, handled astonishingly well by some producers, is that many wines are stylistically very similar. I haven’t found an explanation yet, other than identical vineyard and winemaking practices, but this reinforced a sensation at times of rather simple wines. In several cases oak seemed to have been used to add stu”ng as well as interest, a strategy that rarely paid o$ but which in several cases has sped up maturation even more, while making the wines look tired.The verdict Complicated vintages normally are like a looking-glass amplifying both the great and the mediocre, and potentially throwing light on exceptional terroirs and their location. While the overall opinion seems to be that the north, the higher and therefore cooler part compared with the warmer south of Montalcino, excelled in 2017 this was not uniformly con!rmed by my tasting notes and scores.Single-vineyard wines, or ‘crus’ as they are referred to in Italy, have increasingly grown in importance and I will go into this phenomenon in an upcoming article, but in 2017 these crus don’t suggest a qualitative north/south divide either. Blends, often from grapes coming from both northern and southern parts, made up the majority of the Brunellos I tasted and I suspect that due to global warming blends will not easily decrease in relevance compared with the unstoppable trend for single-vineyard wines. Rather, both will continue to be produced side by side.With the exception of the simplest examples, buying 2017 Brunello should generally be a risk-free a$air, with a lot of enjoyable wines ready from the get-go. But for real complexity you need to dig deeper, not least in price, which in 2017 is unlikely to go down.This has not a little to do with reported record international sales in 2021 for the denomination, despite COVID-19 having a huge negative impact on travel, marketing and Brunello’s main outlet – restaurants. This success will have been propelled by the outstanding 2016 vintage, which came on the heels of the commercially successful 2015 vintage (which I personally think is not of the same standing). The international demand for Brunello di Montalcino keeps on growing and a quantitatively small 2017 vintage should have no great di”culty selling.The question remains whether investing in 2017s would make sense. I think the bestwines are worth cellaring because it will be very interesting to see in due course the stamp this very hot and extraordinary vintage will leave. It will certainly be di$erent from any other hot vintage – 2011, 2009, 2007 and the traumatic 2003, in which grapes burned on the vines and the adage ‘a hot vintage is a great vintage’ was !rmly consigned to the bin. But it was 2011 which provided producers with the steep learning curve needed to master the technique and acquire the knowledge of ever-earlier and hotter growing cycles. Since then, a hot vintage hasn’t automatically meant it would taste ‘hot’, as is evidenced by these 2017 Brunello di Montalcinos.
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