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2016 Conti Costanti Brunello di Montalcino

Removed from a professional wine storage facility

6 available
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Ends Sunday, 7pm Pacific

RATINGS

99Wine Enthusiast

This savory stunner has enticing scents of violet, rose and wild berry that gain complexity alongside notes of leather, camphor and sandalwood. The elegantly structured palate is all about precision, featuring juicy cherry, blood orange, star anise and tobacco framed in taut, refined tannins. Bright acidity keeps it energized.

97Wine Spectator

This red features a superb balance between ripe cherry, raspberry and currant fruit and savory elements of juniper and thyme. Earth and mineral accents add detail, and this has everything in the right proportions for a long life ahead.

96Vinous / IWC

...bouquet straddles both the light and dark sides of Sangiovese, rising up with alluring flowery perfumes, cedar dust and crushed cherry, yet then swaying toward rich brown spices and clove. The textures are velvety-smooth and elegant, ushering in a dense core of fleshy red berry fruits, which leave a coating of crystalline minerals and fine tannins in their wake.

94The Wine Advocate

...warm fruit layering with cherry, wild raspberry and plum...some touches of sweetness with candied orange skin and lavender honey. At the back of it all, you get tilled earth and a touch of black olive. This wine reveals good complexity to the bouquet and follows up with a streamlined, mid-weight mouthfeel.

18.5Jancis Robinson

Complex brooding richness on the nose. Fantastic balance between the intense fruit and succulent acidity. Super-fine tannins layering the fruit. Very long, focused, intense and energetic on the finish. Monumental.

PRODUCER

Conti Costanti

Conti Costanti is a historic, 30-acre estate in the eastern edge of Montalcino. The Costanti family has been in Montalcino since the 16th century, and they are part of the region’s aristocracy. Andrea Costanti, who now runs the estate, took the reins from his uncle, Count Emilio, in 1983. Count Emilio had made dramatic improvements to the estate and made Conti Costanti’s Brunellos some of the region’s best. The estate makes about 60,000 bottles a year. Gambero Rosso wrote in 2016 that the Brunellos produced by Andrea “are to all intents and purposes noble wines. Not only because of the Costanti family’s ancestors, but mainly due to the aristocratic expressive features evident for over 30 years in the Sangioveses nurtured by Andrea.” Vinous notes that “the property remains a reference point for Brunello.”

REGION

Italy, Tuscany, Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello di Montalcino is regarded as one of Italy’s best appellations. Located in south central Tuscany below Chianti, the wines of Brunello di Montalcino DOCG are made of a Sangiovese clone called “brunello,” which means “little dark one,” a reference to the brown tones in the skin of the grape. Unlike some Tuscan appellations that allow other grapes to be blended with Sangiovese, Brunello di Montalcino is entirely Sangiovese. Montalcino itself is a picturesque, hill-top town not especially well known for wine production until the mid-19th century, when a local vineyard owner isolated the brunello clone and planted it. Other growers followed suit. Nevertheless it wasn’t until 1970s that wine enthusiasts started paying attention to Brunello di Montalcino, which by then was becoming an outstanding wine. Today there are 120 estates in the DOCG, up from about 25 estates in 1975. Brunellos in general are bigger, darker, more tannic and more powerful wines than Chiantis or most other Sangioveses. By law they must be aged for four years, and two of those years must be in wooden barrels.

VINTAGE

2016 Conti Costanti Brunello di Montalcino