2015 Brunello di Montalcino: The Vintage We Have Been Waiting For?

BY ERIC GUIDO | APRIL 07, 2020

Montalcino is in a constant state of flux. Recent years have brought scandal, a division between traditional and international styles, various efforts to organize and define vineyard sites and repeated battles to change the guidelines of the producers' consortium, all accompanied by a series of fair vintages consumers have often snubbed. You can imagine the happiness 2015 brought winemakers. But is it the vintage consumers have been waiting for?

This isn’t your usual Italian romance, where families that had owned their lands for centuries, if not a millennium, founded a wine, style, and name, which has maintained and gained prominence over all of this time. Montalcino isn’t a region that built its reputation on marketing, branding, or a projection of prestige that was never truly earned. No, this is about a fortified city that housed the last remnants of Siena’s citizens when Florence and Spain took control of their territory - and held their own while under siege. A city, over-brimming in population, that then remained something of an island unto itself for the next three hundred years, before Italy unified in the 19th century.

This is a story about families, who in many cases descended from sharecroppers (mezzadria). Of course, they had their heroes, such as Clemente Santi, who pioneered not only their namesake but also one of their most renowned vineyards. But that was just over 150 years ago, a blink of an eye by Italian wine standards. And yes, there has been a large amount of outside investment in previous decades, yet that doesn’t change the fact that this is a story about hard-working families who take pride in their lands, in their city, and in the grape that they hold high above all else.

This Story Is About Brunello di Montalcino and the 2015 Vintage

Let’s take a step back because in the grand scheme of things, Brunello di Montalcino hasn’t gotten its fair shake over the last decade or so. Montalcino has been plagued with scandal (who doesn’t remember Brunello-Gate?), which unfortunately hurt the entire region in the eyes of consumers. I can attest to this because, as a longtime fan of Brunello, I remember that it was the main topic of conversation in every wine shop I would visit at the time.

Now let’s consider the transition of taste that Montalcino has witnessed, on the side of consumers and markets, suddenly adopting a stance against Italian wine made in an “International Style.” Granted, we want Sangiovese to taste like Sangiovese. However, a big misconception and oversimplified view of Montalcino is that it is the oak in a Brunello producer’s cellar that creates the dark, large-scaled, and dramatic wines that many producers continue to release. The fact is that it’s more often the location and the farming that is the culprit. Are there wineries that are using French barrique to age their Brunello? Of course there are—yet you may be surprised by how many of your favorite wines from the region are raised in French oak, whether it be Barrique or Tonneaux—yet this is done in a way so not to hurt the typicity of the wine.