2003 Brunello di Montalcino
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Tasting notes
From a scorching hot vintage, the 2003 Brunello di Montalcino has held up beautifully, tasted now more than a decade after its commercial release. The wine shows some tertiary definition that adds to its character and complexity. You get subtle hints of caramel and exotic spice over dried blackberry and fig. The heat of the vintage can be identified in terms of mouthfeel, where the wine delivers a loosely knit textural core with polished, silky tannins. But that trademark acidity is there, and that remains the secret of the wine's impressive longevity.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Good deep, bright red. The nose is at once medicinal and superripe, hinting at red fruits and exotic flowers, plus a whiff of baked bread. Then supersweet and ripe but penetrating, less austere than usual for a young Biondi-Santi but nonetheless quite tannic, even a bit dry on the finish. I don't find much in the way of floral or spicy high notes here; in fact, time in the glass brought a hint of pruniness. Atypically lacking in grip for a wine from this famed estate. I opened my second bottle to try again but it was corked!
This pioneer of Brunello has stubbornly clung to the traditional style, and this vintage is no exception. Medium ruby in colour, with floral red fruits on the nose. Quite tannic, edgy and herbal, with tart cranberry and red cherry fruit. It requires faith now that the fruit will open and the tannins soften later. (LM)
The warmth of the vintage seems to have rounded out the 2003 Brunello di Montalcino, giving it a nice sense of ripeness and fullness (in relative terms) that is quite unusual for this wine at this early stage. To be sure, this is still a very stern, angular style of Brunello, particularly at this point in its infancy, yet the tannins are surprisingly harmonious and the potential for fine drinking in the future seems to be present. The wine needs a minimum of several years of bottle age and should age gracefully for decades.