2018 Brunello di Montalcino
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Tasting notes
The 2018 Brunello Di Montalcino is characteristically bold in its profile, with pure black cherry fruit, toasted cedar, sweet baking spice, and layers of Mediterranean herbs, Full-bodied, with distinctive dark mineral notes of graphite, blackberry, and scorched earth, I am very pleasantly surprised and impressed with this robust yet wonderful wine from the Luce estate. This was certainly a vintage that tamed down the usual ripeness in all the right ways, and I love this wine’s mineral-tinged edge. Drink 2025-2040.
Critic scores
Average Score
Walter Speller, jancisrobinson.com
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
The 2018 Brunello di Montalcino is generous and open in personality, but like many other wines from this vintage, the alcohol content is just too high at 15.5%. This is a particular problem when it comes to Sangiovese from Montalcino, a denomination that plays its best cards in terms of elegant, age-worthy wines. A vintage like this is better suited to near and medium-term drinking. It shows sweet cherry, dried raspberry, spice and fragrant rose. The wine is presented in a heavy glass bottle that is graphically beautiful despite its less environmentally friendly implications.
Inky plum colour, this is full of grip and life, but the alcohol is just a touch intrusive which shortens the finish, adding crème de mur to the fresh raspberry fruits, along with soy, tar, leather and slate. 88ha estate, winemaker Alessandro Marini.
Opening slowly in the glass, the 2018 Brunello di Montalcino lifts up with a spicy bouquet of cinnamon-spiced cherries and dusty rose. This is pure elegance on the palate, silky and pliant, gaining a lovely tension as mineral-laced dark red fruits slowly saturate. The 2018 finishes with mentholated freshness and structure, with edgy tannins that tug at the cheeks and a hint of sour citrus that maintains a lovely energy.