Salicutti: Montalcino outsider and leader

17 Feb 2015

Francesco Leanza from Salicutti in Montalcino

2010 Salicutti Brunello Piaggione

A great wine from a great terroir

'If you appreciate the subtle elegance and complexity of great Burgundy, this is your Brunello: luminous and garnet-colored with earthy flavors and a silky palate. Proprietor Francesco Leanza makes his graceful Brunellos with organic farming methods, wild yeasts, and as little intervention as possible in the cellar…' - Kerin O'Keefe, Brunello di Montalcino: Understanding and Appreciating One of Italy's Greatest Wines

Salicutti's story as a modern estate is both fascinating and instructive. Rome-based Francesco Leanza found the property in the 1980s while out exploring the area on foot. It was in very poor shape, more or less subsistence farming, semi-supporting a pair of elderly sharecroppers squatting in a house with a lot of potential. After a long negotiation, in 1990 Francesco managed to buy it, including the sitting tenants. He has worked both like a demon and with great precision to realise that potential brilliantly.

Work on the organically certified vineyards (the first in the region) really began in 1994 when three plots were restored and replanted and has developed ever since. Francesco is a terroiriste; thinks like a Burgundian and is convinced that the future lies in single vineyard expressions of Sangiovese. He believes the many different terroirs will greatly reward identification, but few have yet been mapped. His wines have the complexity of Burgundy and are filled with fruit and floral aromas, while the tannins are silky and unforced.

Francesco is an incomer to Montalcino, but one so filled with knowledge and enthusiasm for the traditions and authenticity of both the DOCG and Brunello as a grape that he has formed a new, rival Consorzio - Sangiovese per Amici - with a couple of his peers to try to uphold the values of the region. He has no faith in the establishment, seeing the official Consorzio as stuffed with large, quasi-industrial producers who want to change the rules to suit themselves. /CW

Offered subject to remaining unsold for shipment spring 2015