Montalcino, Tuscany

Last January we had the pleasure to visit Montalcino. Although it was a bit too cold, we enjoyed this beautiful town located in Tuscany, Italy. Montalcino is famous for its exquisite wine, the one and only Brunello di Montalcino.

Erika had tried a couple of Brunellos in New York, where she currently lives, and was really impressed by this bold wine, so when we started to plan a trip to Tuscany, Montalcino was on our priority list.

We stayed at a beautiful bed and breakfast called La Casella. It is a cute little house with amazing sights to a beautiful landscape in the middle of a vineyard  where they produce a great Brunello called La Casella. Because it was very cold outside, Enrique and I enjoyed our time in our quaint little apartment drinking some wine and just taking in the beautiful scenery!

We visited the vineyard Il Palazzone and learned so much about Brunello.  Brunello is one of Italy’s most prestigious and expensive Italian wines.  Brunello means the “little dark one” which Erika already knew since she is Italian descent and her Italian language skills are OK (just enough to figure this one out). The reason for the name is due to the size and color of the grape.

Even in Italy, this wine is not for someone on a budget, it is quite pricey and when we were there we learned why. To be able to call a wine a Brunello, there are a set of strict rules and conditions to be met. To name a few, the wine needs to be made out of 100% sangiovese grapes and it is required to age for 4 years (5 for riserva wines) 2 years of which must be spent in oak. Also, the land is protected against excessive growth, therefore limiting expansion of the vineyards. However, a couple of new rules were approved recently and for us the best one is that larger bottle sizes of 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 liters are now permitted! Can you imagine 18 liters of Brunello? Like, in your house, on your table, just ready to be opened???  Between the both of us we could use a 6L bottle of Brunello on our usual wine dates! Yes, we love to do wine dates at home! We pick a couple of wines to try, buy some great cheese and jamon serrano… ahhhh! not too many things can top our wine dates. We’ll talk more about them as we go, but one thing is for sure, we like them so much that since we live in different countries we also make time to make a wine date via skype! The wine usually makes the distance a little more bearable.

We brought back a couple of bottles, yet to be opened. We learned from the producers and the sellers from the wine stores that we should wait about 5-10 years from production date before opening a Brunello. But of course we bought some “vintage” ones which should be on point to drink. Another tip that was given to us was to open the wine and leave it in a decanter for 2 hours in order to open the flavor and let the residues  settle.

We were waiting for a special date to open a bottle, but what the heck, let’s just make today a special one and open it already! After all, we have been training hard and logged some serious miles this week. So I’d say: let’s drink up! Cheers! The review of the chosen "little dark one" will come soon.