Fossacolle, Brunello di Montalcino 2016

A stunning wine with beautifully smooth tannins, this is from the legendary 2016 vintage, which is now entering its plateau of elegance, showing maturing fruit, integrated spices and all of that lovely Sangiovese character that the best sites can yield. This is a legendary wine from one of the top producers in the region.

Ripe black cherries, red fruits and some dried fruit marry with leather, tobacco and tea leaves, to give an incredible array of flavour that is so typical of really fine Brunellos.

Fossacolle is a wonderful estate in Montalcino, being one of the small, family run, legendary producers, making wonderfully structured, age-worthy Brunellos from only two and a half hectares of their vineyard area. The Marchetti family have been in the Montalcino are since the early 18th-Century and have amassed huge expertise in managing the best plots in the face of climate change and increased interest in the Montalcino appellation as a whole. Their vines are planted on clay and limestone soild with south-facing aspect. 

In the winery, the grapes undergo a very traditional, gentle fermentation that includes a cold-soak pre-fermentation, followed by spontaneous fermentation in concrete tanks to facilitate the textural smoothness that suits Sangiovese so well. Following malo-lactic fermentation the wine is aged for two years in French and Slavonian oak barrels that range in size from 225-litre barriques to 25-hectolitre vats, allowing again for textural management as well as for supporting oak flavours. The wine is then returned to concrete tanks for a year to settle further, before bottling. After bottling they allow it to rest a further eight months before it is released to the market - all going to show how much they care about the condition and quality in which the wine gets to the consumer... if only more producers were like this!

Full disclosure: we have very limited quantities of this wine - the labels have unfortunately been slightly discoloured by some rogue wine. Nothing wrong with the wine inside the bottle but a reason to offer you a fantastic price.