Poggio Antico, Brunello di Montalcino 2016

This is so aromatic and floral with cedar, dried roses, and black cherries. It’s full-bodied, yet so refined and tight with silky tannins and a flavorful finish. Tight and focused. Needs time to open, but shows beautiful finesse and focus. Drink after 2024.

The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino offers a pure and classic expression of the vintage with bright fruit tones, wild cherry, toasted nut, blue flower and forest floor. Whereas the other wines in the Poggio Antico portfolio undergo aging in smaller tonneaux, this wine is aged in large Slavonian casks instead. You taste the lift and brightness of the fruit, and it's all quite lovely. Grapes are sourced across a 13-hectare site at a very high 500 meters in elevation. The name of this area is I Poggi, and the soils here are a bit lighter and rockier with both schistous galestro and limestone alberese. I love the delicate approach here, the intensity of those floral aromas, and the silky nature of the mouthfeel. Some 34,000 bottles will be released in January 2021. This classic Brunello really stands out.

Powerful black cherry and raspberry fruits, has a sense of energy and forward motion together with the savoury succulence of roses, dried herbs and smoked earth that Italy does so well. First year on the Place de Bordeaux for this 33ha estate located high in the Brunello hills, owned by Belgian Marcel van Poecke. In organic conversion.

The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is a pleasantly fruit-forward and nuanced expression of the vintage. Pretty notes of black cherry, sweet spices, hints of cedar and tobacco form up in the glass. It’s soft and pliant in the mouth, finding symmetry through zesty acids, while displaying pure red and hints of black berries. A gentle tug of tannin lingers, along with mineral tones and violet florals. The 2016 should hold up well over the short term in the cellar, but I’d err on the side of caution and enjoy these sooner rather than later.