2016 Uccelliera Brunello di Montalcino Riserva
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Tasting notes
A dark red brick color, the 2016 Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva boasts expressive aromas of red fruits, including baked red cherries, balsamic herbs, truffles, and forest floor. It's fresh and compact on the palate, with a lot of focus, offering ripe tannins and even acidity that has a clean and refreshing feel. It's very seamless wine throughout and closes with a very long and focused finish. I'm very impressed with this wine from Uccelieria, which will drink well over the next 20 years. Based in Castelnuova dell'Abate, Andrea Cortonesi leads his family estate, as well as their more recent wines of Voliero, which can also found in this report.
Critic scores
Walter Speller, jancisrobinson.com
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva is a terrific wine: bold, well-defined, powerful and balanced. There are many good things to relate, but the high alcohol content (measured at 15.5%) is the only distraction. This is a trend in the Riserva category in the 2016 vintage. The bouquet shows black cherry, cassis, earth, leather and dried roses. The palate offers soft fruit flavors supported by firm oak tannins. Coming back to the bottle 24 hours later, I found impressive integration and smoothness that took away from that alcohol heat. Production is 9,600 bottles.
Maturing mid ruby with narrow orange rim. Lifted and savoury on the nose with fruit-cake hints and cinnamon bark. Fruit harvested very late? Sweet and rich, with creamy oak and with more than a hint of dried fruit. Attractive if a little popular. Fully ready now. (WS)
Rich and deeply alluring, the 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva wafts up to display crushed ashen stone mixed with hints of ginger, dusty florals and black cherry preserves. This is velvety-smooth and pliant in feel, lifted by cooling herbal and mineral tones, as an opulent wave of ripe red and black fruits washes across the palate, leaving a staining of minerals and spice in its wake. It’s long and structured, in need of further time to come fully into focus, yet somehow the 2016 Riserva remains completely fresh, tapering off to inner earth tones and hints of blueberry. Time will reveal further depths. This is an utterly classic Uccelliera Brunello in the making.