SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch bangs the drum for one of Tuscany’s enduring classics: This perfectly proportioned Brunello di Montalcino from La Torre offers a near perfect expression of classic Brunello each vintage.
Tuscany’s Montalcino region continues to both delight and confound me. It always has. To approach it from the north is to experience one of most dramatic vistas in wine: The fortified hilltop village of Montalcino and its surrounding vineyards are like an island in a vast sea of gold and green, giving you the feeling that you’re storming a Medieval castle. There’s no question it’s one of the world’s most important sources of cellar-worthy red wines, but as someone with a deep and abiding relationship with the Sangiovese grape, I’m often confounded by the broad range of expressions coming out of this relatively confined space. Sure, there are variations in soils and exposures within Montalcino, and different oak aging regimens from producer to producer, but…when one wine is inky, black, and chocolatey, and the other is garnet red, tangy, and spicy, and they’re both from the same place and vintage, it’s hard to square. But let’s not dwell on that. I’d rather just sing the praises of this classically proportioned Brunello from La Torre. This wine, to me, is one of the most authentic representations of the Sangiovese grape from this place. It’s a powerful wine, yes—as Brunello di Montalcino is meant to be—but there is acidity, energy and bright black cherry fruit supported by a forest-floor woodsiness. There are still far too many heavily extracted, oak-slathered “show” wines coming out of Montalcino. I want nerve and perfume from my Sangiovese. La Torre reliably provides that, and at a great price. Blessed with a great vintage in 2012, they’ve delivered the goods once again—no well-chosen Italian wine cellar should be without it!
Perhaps I’ve said all there is to say above, but here’s a little more detail on La Torre: Producing only about 1,000 cases of Brunello di Montalcino in any given vintage, La Torre has been one of the region’s artisanal benchmarks since its first vintage was released in 1982. Owned by the Anania family, who originally purchased the property in 1976, the estate includes just 5.6 hectares of vineyards in the commune of La Sesta, on the “south slope” of the Montalcino hill near the village of Sant’Angelo in Colle. Vineyards face south and southwest and sit at some of the highest elevations in all of Montalcino, with limestone-infused marls mixed with clay. As we’ve noted repeatedly in Brunello di Montalcino offers, the conventional wisdom on Montalcino is that the wines from vineyards on this south-facing slope are generally richer, broader styles in comparison to those from vineyards facing north. La Torre is one of a number of south-slope producers who turn such wisdom on its ear (others include Soldera and Poggio di Sotto) by producing wines that show off the bright acidity, perfumed aromatics, and savory, mineral edge of the Sangiovese grape. The term “fruit bomb” and Sangiovese don’t belong in the same sentence—not if you’re being true to the variety, which, physiologically, is not Cabernet-like in color and extract, much as some might try.
This is not to say that Brunello di Montalcino shouldn’t be powerful—it is structured, with a firm acid backbone and tannins derived both from the grapes and from long mandatory aging periods in wood. But great Brunello isn’t sweet and syrupy; it’s spicy, savory, smoky. A wine the evokes a walk in the woods and well-charred steaks on the grill. La Torre’s Brunello toes the “traditional” line—it’s fermented in stainless steel tanks for about three weeks, then transferred to large, used, Slavonian oak botti (vats) for 42 months’ of aging (a small percentage of the wine spends 12 months in smaller barriques, which lends a touch of polish to the final wine). There’s also a substantial period of bottle aging before the wine is released into the market (by law, Brunello di Montalcino wines are released on January 1 of the year five years from the vintage year—which, in this case, means this past January).
The 2012 vintage in Montalcino was a hot one, like 2011, but critics’ reports on ’12 are unanimous on its superiority. It’s as if producers, after releasing many ultra-rich, alcoholic wines in ’11, were better prepared in ’12 to weather the heat and deliver balanced wines. Many observers compare 2012’s wines to the tensile, pitch-perfect 2010s, with perhaps a little more drinkability in their youth.
Based on this 2012 from La Torre (as well as several others we’ve got in the offers pipeline), I’d say the advance reports are on point: This is a bright, aromatic, well-defined Sangiovese that’s both exquisite now and clearly built for extended aging. In the glass it’s a deep (but not opaque) garnet with hints of red/orange at the rim—Sangiovese, like Nebbiolo, is not naturally inky—and the aromatics are a heady Tuscan stew of red and black cherry, black plum, cedar, tobacco leaf, grill char, saddle leather, and a hint of bitter chocolate. It has depth and some palate-coating richness checked by Sangiovese’s brisk acidity; even with all that time in oak, it’s not anywhere near as tannic a wine as a young Barolo, but it’s no puffball, either. If you’re enjoying a bottle now, decant it about an hour before serving in large Bordeaux stems at 60 degrees. Otherwise, feel free to lay this down indefinitely; I foresee it peaking somewhere around 2025, and continuing to deliver well beyond that. The tried-and-true
bistecca alla fiorentina is an obvious choice for a food pairing here, but, just for kicks, I did a search for “Tuscan burgers” to see what might pop up—only to find dozens of recipes, including the attached. This, for me, is the high-end red wine answer to Champagne and fried chicken. Check it out! Cheers.
— D.L.
