I’ll be honest with you: I was starting to worry a little bit about Brunello di Montalcino. It had been a while since I had tasted something with age from the region that was genuinely special. Then an old friend from New York opened some back vintages from Le Macioche, a jewel box of an estate just southeast of the Montalcino village, and my faith was restored.
Today’s 2007 is Montalcino Sangiovese done right: aromatic, energetic, focused, structured…the whole package. In an era of increasingly rich, even syrupy styles of Brunello in some vintages, Le Macioche is a fantastic example of how a wine can be “modern”—which is to say clean and polished—without being hugely extracted and over-oaked. The Sangiovese grape’s proportions are meant to be moderate, not massive; there should be aromatic lift and nerve. This wine, now a decade old, has that in spades. It’s a blue-chip Italian collectible, with many years of graceful aging still ahead of it—a best-in-class bottle that should not be missed!
My first visit to the tiny Le Macioche property was about 10 years ago, when it was owned by Matilde Zecca and Achille Mazzocchi and the legendary Tuscan enologist Maurizio Castelli—one of the greats at coaxing elegance and aroma from the Sangiovese grape—was the estate’s consultant. Covering only about 6 hectares total (with three hectares of vines classified for Brunello production), the estate has changed hands twice in the intervening years; last year it was purchased by brothers Riccardo and Renzo Cotarella, the former a famous Italian “flying winemaker” and the latter the longtime technical director at the sprawling Marchese Antinori wine firm. Together with their daughters, they took over Le Macioche in 2017 and they chose very wisely: situated at about 450 meters elevation, the vineyards here face mostly southeast and are rooted in galestro—the schistous, limestone marl found in Montalcino’s best sites. The property is just down the road from the iconic Biondi-Santi winery.
It’s too early to tell which direction the Cotarellas will take Le Macioche (although Riccardo is known for opulent, generously oaked wines), but this 2007 was crafted in a traditional style, undergoing a lengthy maceration on its skins during the initial fermentation and aged in 30-hectoliter Slavonian oak casks for 44 months. It then rested in bottle a minimum of six months before release.
I’ve always found Le Macioche wines to be among the prettiest and most “feminine” examples of Brunello di Montalcino, and this ’07 holds true to form: Some beautiful ‘secondary’ aromas have entered the picture with bottle age, and the texture is fine-grained and firm, with lots of freshness and energy. Dare I call it…’Burgundian’? In the glass it’s a medium garnet red moving to brick orange at the rim, with aromas of black cherry, plum, red and black currant, orange peel, tar, leather, baking spices, and lots of woodsy underbrush. Nearly full-bodied but blessed with great balancing acidity, the wine’s tannins have softened but it remains refreshing rather than syrupy. It’s in a beautiful place right now, and the bottle I tasted stayed alive and improving over the course of three days open; I think it’s got another ten years in it for sure, but do yourself a favor and open one soon. Decant it about 45 minutes before service in large Bordeaux stems at 60-65 degrees. This wine was made for pretty much any beef preparation you want to throw at it, but its prettiness and perfume have me thinking have me leaning towards the leaner cuts. Check out the attached beef tenderloin recipe and do not worry if you don’t finish the whole bottle in one sitting—though I don’t know how that would be possible. Cheers!
— David Lynch
