Sweet spices, roses and dusty stone give way to rubbed sage and rosemary as the 2016 Brunello di Montalcino slowly evolves in the glass. This is pure elegance, silky-smooth and supple with a mineral tinge that adds a lovely depth to its black cherry fruit as brisk acidity adds a lovely tension. Saline minerals cascade throughout as a tinge of orange mingles with gritty tannins, and liquid stone notes linger through the long and staining finale. (EG)

The 2016 Brunello di Montalcino from Castiglion del Bosco is a fine, fine example. The wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts and raised in French barriques, with twenty percent of the oak new each year and the remainder one and two wine casks. The 2016 Brunello comes in at fourteen percent octane in this vintage, and offers up a complex and quite refined bouquet of red and black cherries, plums, cigar wrapper, a touch of Tuscan herb tones, nutskin, gentle spices, a fine base of soil and a very well done framing of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, focused and nicely transparent down to the soil, with a good core of fruit, tangy acids, ripe tannins and a long, complex and very nicely balanced finish.

The Castiglion del Bosco 2016 Brunello di Montalcino is a fruit-forward expression with soft cherry, blackberry, tilled earth and a touch of sweet spice. This wine is made in an especially accessible style that prizes ripe fruit and oak aging (in both barrique and botte). Fruit comes from a 52-hectare vineyard with galestro schist and clay. The tannins are more evident here compared to the 2015 vintage; however, this wine is almost ready to go with beef tagliata topped with porcini mushrooms. (ML)