2012 Rosso di Montalcino

Le Ragnaie is one of the great recent success stories of Montalcino. Proprietor Riccardo Campinoti grew up loving wine long before his family, originally from Siena, bought Le Ragnaie in 2002. Unlike so many of his colleagues in Montalcino, Campinoti has a level of intellectual curiosity about the world's great wines that clearly fuels and inspires him. That is one of the reasons he has achieved what can only be described as a virtually unheard of level of success in less than a decade. Campinoti's 2004 Brunello, which I recently tasted, is the product of a young winemaker learning his craft, the 2010 comes across as the work of a veteran. Quite simply, the 2010 Brunellos are the best wines Riccardo Campinoti has produced to date during his short but brilliant career. Le Ragnaie bottles three Brunellos; the straight bottling is made from vineyards at the winery and in Castelnuovo dell'Abate, the Ragnaie V.V. is made from the oldest vines on the property, while the Fornace emerges from a site in Castelnuovo adjacent to Mastrojanni's Schiena d'Asino. The 2010 Brunellos saw 40 days on the skins and spent three years in cask.