2009 Brunello di Montalcino: The Day of Reckoning

Readers will have to be highly selective with the 2009 Brunellos. An extremely challenging vintage pushed growers to the limit.

The 2009 Growing Season

The 2009 growing season in Montalcino will be remembered by the massive heat wave that arrived suddenly in August of that year. As it turns out, I was on vacation that summer in Tuscany with my family. I remember going to see vineyards in Montalcino one day and being shocked by the dramatic effects of the heat. Vines are incredibly adaptive plants but, like people, they don’t like sudden change. The intense August heat caused sugars to mount faster than phenolic ripeness could be achieved. In some places, it is obvious the heat caused plants to shut down, blocking ripeness. In other spots, yields were too high for plants to carry their fruit through to full maturity. For more context on 2009 and subsequent vintages, readers might want to revisit this short video I shot upon my return from Montalcino in February.

2009 Brunello di Montalcino: Every Vintage Can’t Be Epic

The 2009 Brunellos are some of the most uneven, problematic young wines I have ever tasted. As a group, the 2009s are forward, light in color and built for near-term drinking. Readers will see obvious signs of maturity in wines with advanced color and flavor profiles. In fact, many wines are already alarmingly evolved and mature. The 2009 Brunellos are generally medium in body, with none of the voluptuous texture or raciness of great riper years such as 2007. It is a vintage in which many wines that spent more than the required minimum of two years in barrel are excessively forward. The 2009 Rossos were gorgeous; they captured the early appeal of the vintage. When it comes to Brunello, though, things are quite different.  Simply put, 2009 is the most inconsistent and difficult young vintage of Brunello I have tasted in many years. As always, there are a handful of overachieving estates and outstanding wines, but not more than that. This is a vintage that highlights the differences between terroirs and also very clearly separates the top growers from the rest of the pack.

The hype that is prevalent in today’s world often results in vintages being lumped into one of two camps; we either have yet another ‘vintage of the century’ or a total disaster. In Montalcino, 2009 is, in aggregate, a below average vintage. I believe the producers’ consortium, the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino, made a serious mistake in awarding the 2009 vintage four out of a possible five stars. Although readers find it shocking, the truth is that winemakers rarely taste in the cellars of their colleagues. If and when they do, producers tend to taste only the wines of their friends or those with whom they share philosophical views. There is very little openness in Montalcino. Instead, producers look to the Consorzio for guidance. The Consorzio’s four-star rating gave producers a misplaced sense of confidence about the vintage that was unwarranted. Most of this vintage should have been bottled as Rosso.

I can’t imagine there will be much of an interest for the 2009 Brunellos given the quality of the wines. Historically, the market for Brunello is either red-hot or dead in the water. It’s pretty easy to see the direction this vintage is headed in. Hopefully producers will price their 2009s attractively so the wines can flow through the system quickly. If not, the value of the 2009s will go to zero, as so many wines are already mature.

Tasting wines from barrel at Costanti