2013 Brunello di Montalcino: The Throwback Vintage

BY ERIC GUIDO | FEBRUARY 01, 2024

Montalcino’s climate and wines have greatly changed over the last 20 years, and that change accelerates with every passing vintage. The idea of having a cool and extended growing season is slowly disappearing into the pages of history, as even the top years of the last decade would be considered warm by the standards of the past. Today, the quality of a vintage is less about the overall climate and more about how the individual sub-regions find balance and deal with the warm and dry conditions that are now the norm. However, 2013 is the year in recent memory that we can still look back on and undoubtedly consider a throwback or even classic.

At Castelnuovo dell'Abate, looking out toward the Orcia Valley from Poggio di Sotto.

Interestingly, from a seasonal weather standpoint, 2013 draws comparisons to years that didn’t yield such classic wines, such as 2005 and 2008. That is partially due to a combination of precipitation and cool conditions that all three seasons exhibited. Yet, as each year shows its strengths and weaknesses, 2013 resulted in beautifully balanced wines due to warm and sunny weather at the end of the season, propelling the berries to ideal ripeness. Rain threatened many producers at the end of September, but most were able to avoid any issues through properly timed harvests. Two thousand thirteen was a successful year throughout the entire region, which seldom occurs in modern-day vintages. From northeast to northwest and southeast to southwest, collectors will more success stories than failures. Numerous wines show wonderful transparency of terroir. The tragedies that did occur had more to do with farming and timing than location because some producers chose to pick prior to the forecasted rains in late September and failed to achieve phenolic ripeness.