2021 San Polino Brunello di Montalcino

Displaying a medium red/garnet hue, the 2021 Brunello Di Montalcino has a fantastic nose, with ripe cherries, worn leather, wildflowers, balsamic, and a subtle rustic edge. The palate is medium-bodied and both inviting and structured, with outstanding clarity and length, ripe tannins, refreshing acidity, and a great finish. It’s exceptionally balanced and harmonious and should have no trouble drinking beautifully over the next 15-20 years. (AF)

The story first. In 1991, Luigi Fabbro, a Friulian, and his English wife Katia Nussbaum bought an abandoned hill southeast of Montalcino: no water, no electricity, six-hundred-year-old olive trees and soil that had not seen a chemical in decades. They farm organically, ferment spontaneously with native yeasts in 35-hectolitre truncated-cone oak vats, and have spent three decades obsessing over the microbial life of their soils, long before it was fashionable. The estate makes two Brunelli: Helichrysum, from the high vineyards around the house, and this classic bottling, from a five-hectare plot on the northern side of Montalcino at about 300 metres on deep clay and marl. Three days of cold soak, a month on the skins, three years in large Slavonian oak with a share in seasoned French barriques. 2021 gave Montalcino a cool winter, a dry warm summer without heat spikes and a calm September, and the result is a vintage of precision rather than mass. In the glass, it pours a mid ruby with a translucent rim. The nose is extremely perfumed: Morello cherry and wild raspberry, white rose and lavender, Mediterranean scrub, cedar and sandalwood. On the palate, it is medium-bodied and vibrant, with fine-grained, chalky tannins, blood orange and star anise on the finish and acidity that keeps it vertical.