Brunello di Montalcino 2004: a retrospective

My arrival in Montalcino in late 2004 to write a Tuscan travel guide was well timed.

My first visit was to see a winemaker friend from my Bordeaux days, Hans Vinding-Diers, then winemaker at Tenuta di Argiano. His excitement about 2004 was palpable, and it was no surprise that 2004 garnered the top five-star rating from the Montalcino region’s consorzio.

Scroll down for Monty Waldin’s tasting notes and scores for Brunello di Montalcino 2004

Pristine grapes enabled leisurely macerations. Extracting tannin, colour and flavour posed scant risk of bitterness: the malleable tannins made for Brunellos with notable silkiness, a key attribute of great Sangiovese; colours were bright limpid crimson, neither oddly opaque nor worryingly transparent; and fruit expression was clear, with pristine, mouthwatering, direct flavours.

The 2004 season

The cold 2003-4 winter enabled full vine dormancy, a much needed respite after 2003’s very stressy heatwave.

Spring rain was another boon, getting the vines going pretty evenly from the start, meaning if all went well ripening would be even too so. Thus flavour and aroma nuances between plots that should normally ripen say 5 or 15 days apart were evident, facilitating the presence of extra layers of complexity and interest to the final blends.

Summer brought dream conditions with bright, sunny days and cool nights. This was good for both vines and field workers because such conditions made for easier, less hurried, more precise and more flexible farming – a potential boon for all, but especially so for Montalcino’s larger estates.

Estate by estate

Hence it was no surprise Brunello’s big guns, most of which are located in the wide open spaces of Montalcino’s hotter south, did so well in this retrospective tasting.

Argiano and Col d’Orcia excelled, the latter doing the double for both its Brunello normale and its single-vineyard Poggio al Vento (‘windy hill’), which exuded freshness. You’d never guess it spent four years in large oak vats.

Further west, towards the coast the Frescobaldi family’s Castelgiocondo also did the double with high scores for both its regular and Riserva Brunellos. It sounds easy to do, as if one follows the other, but this level of consistency across a producer’s range involves precise blending of vine plots and wine lots to make each wine coherent, meaningful and distinctive to its siblings.

Val di Suga, a single site specialist, produced a beautifully fresh Brunello from its Spuntali vineyard. This faces southwest so gets full afternoon sun and is normally one of the warmest sites in Montalcino.

Meanwhile, Castello Banfi’s 2004 is the best Brunello I’ve tried from the Mariani family for its punch, typicity, accessibility and staying power.

Smaller traditionalist Montalcino estates, that were highly respected then and are today’s icons, made Brunellos in their typical unshouty way, not tempted to imitate the brasher, points-driven style which was then gaining traction.

Such traditionalists include the late Franco Biondi-Santi of Biondi-Santi, the late Nello Baricci of Baricci Colombaio Montosoli, the late Franco Pacenti, Enzo Tiezzi, and the Fuligni family among others.

Other smaller, and essentially brand new, estates such as Gianna Neri’s Col di Lamo and the Terzuoli family’s SassodiSole in Montalcino’s still very unfashionable Torrenieri showed no newcomers’ nerves.

Further south, the Loacker family’s Corte Pavone and San Polino were especially notable for being among the very few certified organic or biodynamic estates in Montalcino in 2004.

Historic estates in the warmer south like Fattoria dei Barbi and Ciacci Piccolomini showed the value of old school winemaking practises, guiding rather than dictating ferments, leading to open-knit Brunellos whose soft autumnal flavours flow.

Other Brunellos made in a succulent classic-modern style include Bramante, which made its debut Brunello in 2004 after the owners of Sanlorenzo, the Ciolfi family, stopped selling their grapes.

In a not dissimilar stylistic vein was Tenuta Le Potazzine, made by duo Gigliola Giannetti and Giuseppe Gorelli, the latter a Montalcino-based winemaking consultant.

Montalcino’s sheer size means vineyards can pop up anywhere. Like the south, northern Montalcino has both larger and smaller estates, for instance Altesino and Pian delle Querci respectively. Both delivered smooth, mouthwatering wines with well judged weight from clay soils, allied to bright fruit very much in keeping with the season.

The mercurial Rudi Cosimi seems to have regaled himself in 2004 with two beautifully clear Brunellos which express what I see as the key aspects of 2004: bright sunlight, cool nights, and the pristine juiciness of the grapes.

Conclusion

This Brunello di Montalcino 2004 retrospective tasting was hosted for me in Montalcino by the consorzio in October 2020.

It’s rare to taste over 40 Brunellos in one sitting and be able to walk out of the door feeling refreshed like you’ve just finished a well-filled glass of your favourite mineral water, but I have never seen Brunello as an inherently monolithic wine.

Many of these 2004 Brunello di Montalcinos combined a Burgundian-like levity with their multilayered, oak-aided depth. That’s a rare and welcome attribute.

See tasting notes and scores for 40 Brunello di Montalcino 2004

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Monty Waldin is a British broadcaster, author and occasional winemaker, specialising in organics and biodynamics. His first book, The Organic Wine Guide, published in 1999, was voted Britain’s Wine Guide of the Year. His other award-winning books include Biodynamic Wines and Wines of South America. In 2008 he was the subject of ‘Château Monty’, a wine-making documentary series on biodynamic winemaking in the Roussillon, France. As well as writing regularly for Decanter, Monty contributes the entries on organics, biodynamics and sustainability for the Oxford Companion to Wine. He co-created and now hosts VinItaly International’s Italian Wine Podcast. Monty Waldin was the Regional Chair for Tuscany at the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) 2019.

Scroll down for Monty Waldin’s tasting notes and scores for Brunello di Montalcino 2004

The 2004 season

Estate by estate

Conclusion

See tasting notes and scores for 40 Brunello di Montalcino 2004

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