Today’s wine is a Tuscan archetype, sourced from one of Montalcino’s best-known vineyards and crafted by one of its longest-established families. And the 2013 vintage in Montalcino was widely hailed as a great year.
But what’s a ‘great year’? Historically, I think many experts proclaimed the ripest, ‘biggest’ vintages to be best—not only because very ripe vintages produce wines that are more pleasurable to drink young (when critics typically sample/rate them) but because a ‘great’ vintage is likely to be one without any destructive weather events such as frost, hail, or rain—which would, you would think, produce richer, riper wines. A good example in the Italian wine world would be the 1997 vintage—a critically acclaimed blockbuster of a year which, in my view anyway, ended up being outdone by the less famous, but more complete, 1999 vintage. What you’ll find in any number of
accounts of the 2013 Brunello di Montalcino vintage—the wines from which only began arriving on our shores this year—is that it produced very complete, balanced wines. Wines that were perfectly ripe, yes, but not at the expense of elegance, energy, or complexity. Livio Sassetti’s “Pertimali” Brunello di Montalcino is a collector’s wine. A benchmark. Attach a producer of this pedigree with a vintage of this magnitude and you get…well, today’s wine, actually! Do you love Brunello di Montalcino that preserves the purity and perfume of the Sangiovese grape instead of chasing heavy extract and inky color? I know I do. It’s the only kind of Brunello I want to drink, and while I’ll never turn down a Sassetti wine, 2013 is one of the very best versions of this wine I’ve ever had. Do yourself a favor and grab some: It is superb right now and built for the long haul, too!
As we’ve noted in previous offers, the appeal of Livio Sassetti Brunello di Montalcino is that honors the “classical” proportions of the Sangiovese grape—which is to say, more moderate in color and extract and driven by woodsy aromatics and structural tension. On a warming planet, Brunello di Montalcino keeps getting “bigger” and bigger: So many Brunellos I taste these days come across syrupy, even ‘hot’ on occasion, but Sassetti never goes there, not even in the hottest, driest, ‘ripest’ years. In fact, the qualities the 2013 vintage was so celebrated for across the board—aromatics, balance, energy—are the same qualities that perennially distinguish the wines of Sassetti.
And as we’ve also noted before, no wine region in Italy has seen the kind of growth in recognition/prestige/price that Montalcino has. In the late-1960s, when the Brunello di Montalcino DOCG was first being codified, there were but a handful of established commercial producers. Now there are well over 200, working in the same relatively small, confined area—overall there are about 3,500 hectares of vines in Montalcino, with about 2,100 designated for Brunello di Montalcino. Land values here are some of the highest in the wine world, and of course wine prices have generally followed suit.
Livio Sassetti was one of the founding members of the Brunello di Montalcino producer’s consortium, or consorzio, which was created back in 1967—the same year Italy’s DOC(G) system was written into law. His property is one of two which bear the name ‘Sassetti’ (the other is Angelo Sassetti) on the “north slope” of the Montalcino hill. The two Sassettis own pieces of the farm historically known as “Podere Pertimali,” which occupies part of Montalcino’s famed “Montosoli” vineyard. Although Montalcino isn’t known for having much of the vineyard-designate culture that defines Barolo, or Burgundy, Montosoli’s cru status was given voice by the Altesino winery, which has bottled a vineyard-designate wine from the site since the late seventies. Montosoli is a rounded outcropping with 360-degree exposures, and Livio Sassetti’s parcel faces southeast.
A lot has been written about how “north slope” Brunellos differ from their counterparts grown on the south-facing slopes of the appellation—the village of Montalcino itself is like the cherry on top of a sundae, a classic fortified village with vineyards spilling down on all sides. When you pass through Montalcino proper and head down the “back side” of the hill towards Grosseto to the south, you’ve effectively crossed over into “Mediterranean” Tuscany—something that becomes immediately evident as the landscape completely opens. Vineyards on the south slope tend to be harvested earlier than those on the north face, and are said to produce richer wines as a result. But the conventional wisdom isn’t always evident in the glass—although with Sassetti, it is. This 2013 was aged for 36 months in large, used oak botti (the traditional vessel in these parts, more recently replaced by some with newer, smaller barriques) and then spent another 6 months in bottle before release.
This 2013 is lively, balanced, woodsy Sangiovese with plenty of savor to complement its deep black cherry fruit. In the glass, it is a deep crimson moving to slight orange reflections at the rim, with an aromatic profile that toggles between fruity and rustic: Scents of dried red and black cherry, plum, and black raspberry mix with more savory notes of leather, tobacco, fennel seed, clove, orange peel, and forest floor. The tannins have grip, as you’d expect from just-released Brunello, but it’s the acid that gives it energy and focus all the way through the cedary, woodsy finish. And as I’ve found with many of my favorite red Burgundies from the 2014 vintage, this ’13 is fascinating and accessible now (after an hour or so in a decanter) but has all the pieces in the right place for aging (in the end, it’s not the most tannic, powerhouse reds that age the longest; the most balanced wines do). It should continue to drink beautifully for many years to come, likely peaking around its 10th birthday but with many more years in it beyond that. The obvious pairing here is well-charred beef in any form, and yet the finesse of this wine has me thinking of something a little different. The attached turkey leg confit combined with this wine may be the ultimate in “autumnal” feasting. Enjoy!
