2010 Brunello di Montalcino: an introduction
'Not many wines can deliver emotion and surprise, but this vintage delivers it in spades... This is shaping up as an iconic vintage... Brunello's coming of age vintage.' - Monica Larner, erobertparker.com/bboard
'2010 is truly an excellent vintage, because the great are fantastic, the good are great and the mediocre good.' - Walter Speller, jancisrobinson.com
'Vintage of a Lifetime... 2010 for Brunello di Montalcino is the greatest modern vintage of Italy’s most famous red wine region. Never have the wines been so profound in quality, character, and quantity from the best hillside vineyards of Montalcino. They represent a new paradigm for Tuscany’s unique sangiovese-based red.' - James Suckling, jamessuckling.com
2010 was a textbook year in Tuscany; as Walter Speller remarks, exactly what wine schools used to teach. It was a real, old-fashioned vintage where everything happened on cue. The growing season was long and slow at 120 days, with cool breezes and even the lower vineyards that can be a wee bit warm some years have been able to produce fine wines with freshness.
Of course, some of you will already have a sense of the style of 2010 in Montalcino. The 2010 Rosso wines were a revelation to us, with their delicacy, their fine structure and their purity of fruit. We are proud and delighted to be able to present the senior wines from the same houses.
In a world of rising demand for fine wines and a constant background drone of complaining about prices, it's interesting to note that many Brunello prices are little changed over the past decade. Of the first two wines we can offer, we sold (the equivalent) 2001 La Serena for £120 back in 2006; our first Argiano shipment, the 2004, was exactly the same price back in 2009 as the new vintage today. Over the coming weeks we'll be offering some of our other favourite wines, including Colleoni, Lisini, Poggio di Sotto, Le Potazzine, Salicutti, Salvioni and Sesti. There's never been a better time to buy Sangiovese's greatest expression. /CW
Offered subject to remaining unsold for shipment spring 2015
