Tag Archives: Banfi

Brunello, for better or worse (or how I learned to love the fruit bomb)

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Above: I recently asked legendary Tuscan enologist Carlo Ferrini (and historic consultant at Casanova di Neri) what he considered his great contribution to Italian wine. “I took the traditional role of the Tuscan enologist from the cellar to the vineyard,” he told me.

My brother-in-arms and close friend flying winemaker Giovanni Arcari often asks rhetorically: “How many of the winemakers in Franciacorta actually make their living — their main source of income — from growing grapes and making wine?”

I’ve been thinking about Giovanni and his bleeding heart this morning after reading Alfonso’s superb post on Brunello di Montalcino wherein the latter applies his more than three decades of experience, observation, and wisdom to the situation on the ground in the ilcinese.

Even spanning back to Brunello’s ante litteram era, we discover that even for its founding father Biondi Santi, winemaking was not the primary source of income. In fact, Ferruccio Biondi Santi — Brunello’s nineteenth-century “inventor” — was the scion of a noble family with vast land holdings and immense financial resources. His ground-breaking experimentation in massal selection redefined the appellation. But, in turn, that appellation was defined by a handful of landowners who began to produce a “fine” as opposed to “table” wine following in his footsteps.

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that wealthy northern Italians began to buy property there (and they probably wouldn’t have seen Montalcino as such a choice spot had the British not planted roots there and “manicured” the Tuscan countryside, giving it its idyllic patina that we know today; just ask anyone old enough to remember the second world war what it was like in Montalcino from 1945 through the 1960s when the British began to arrive).

Above: Ask any ilcinese over 50 and they will tell you that it was the British who planted the cypress trees in Tuscany in the 1960s.

Today, just scan the names that define the arc of contemporary Montalcino winemaking: Soldera, an insurance magnate originally from the Veneto via Milan; Illy (Mastrojanni), a coffee mogul from Friuli; Parsons (Il Palazzone), U.S. CEO extraordinaire… and of course, Mariani (Banfi), one of the leading importers of fine wine in the U.S. who went to Montalcino in the hope of creating a sparkling wine legacy and ultimately turned Brunello di Montalcino into a super market brand.

Where there were less than 20 bottlers of Brunello in the 1960s, today there are more than 250 members of the Brunello bottlers association.

To Giacomo Neri’s credit — whether you like the style of wine or not — his family started out with humble farm that Giacomo took over when he returned from his mandatory military service. I know this because I met Giacomo for the first time in 1989 on my second visit to Montalcino, when his wines tasted a lot different from the way they do today. Since his collaboration with enologist Carlo Ferrini began in 1993, his Casanova di Neri label has become one of the most sought-after wines in the world, winning impossibly perfect scores from some of our country’s greatest wine writers (what do Nadia Comăneci, Bo Derek, Ann Colgin, and Giacomo Neri have in common? Hint: it’s not their good looks).

I recently met Carlo Ferrini for the first time in Los Angeles, where he and I spoke on a panel together. I asked him what he felt, over the arc of his career, was his greatest contribution to winemaking in Tuscany.

“Before I began working as a consulting enologist,” he said, “enologists were traditionally tasters.”

“Like Gambelli?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “I was among the first to convince growers to replant their vineyards and to adopt more contemporary farming practices.”

And on the subject of Brunellogate?

“I’ve never believed that Merlot or any other grape should be added to Brunello,” he told me. “In Chianti, I’ve followed a Bordeaux model, using different grapes, grown in different sites, to create blends in line with modern tastes. In Montalcino, the wines have always been 100% Sangiovese. It’s my work in the vineyard that has made the difference. Not in the cellar.”

Whatever Ferrini claims and whatever we believe (and for the record, looking Ferrini in the eye, I believed him), the predominate and guiding style of Brunello has changed in Alfonso’s lifetime and my lifetime.

In the beginning, was the style of Brunello guided by a handful of wealthy families who saw big business opportunities in producing wines that could rival their French counterparts? Is it guided today by a small group of wealthy families who see financial opportunity (and tax-shelter vacation homes) in America’s thirst for wines in the global style?

The answer to these questions lies somewhere in between an alpha, an omega, and a brief window (1975-1993?) when Italy’s cultural prosperity delivered an optimism and fostered a belief that even luxury products should be the expression of the land where they were grown and the people who made them. It just so happens that that’s when Alfonso and I had our first contact with the wines.

If you following along here at Do Bianchi, you already know the Brunello that I like to drink (Il Poggione, Brunelli, Soldera are my top three, whether I can afford them or not). And there will be plenty of time to write and discuss the wines that we love at our house…

Instead, please read Alfonso’s post: The Battle for Brunello. I’m just adding my two cents here…

In other news…

Today, Italian wine blogger Andrea Petrini, author of Percorsi di Vino, reposted this offer from Albana di Romagna producer Gabriele Succi (left): if you make a donation to one of the officially sanctioned channels for donations for Emilia-Romagna earthquake victims, you can send him a scan of the receipt via email and he will ship you the same value’s worth of his wine. He sweetens the deal by discounting each of his labels by Euro 1 ex cantina. He’s not giving a portion of proceeds to earthquake victims; he’s giving you the wine for donating.

Click here for the offer (in Italian) and links to official donation sites.

Banfi, Brunello, and the Wall Street Journal

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Above: When I made my annual pilgrimage to Montalcino in September of this year, I took time out to visit the monument at Montaperti, commemorating the 1260 battle there between the Guelphs of Florence (the Papacy) and the Ghibellines of Siena (Holy Roman Empire).

In her recent interview on the Wall Street Journal wine blog, “Co-CEO” of Banfi Christina Mariani states that the Brunello controversy of 2008-2009 “was just to make the press… Everyone was cleared, including us.”

When Italy’s top wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani (and co-editor of our blog VinoWire) reposted the interview on his blog last week, another top Italian wine blogger, Gian Luca Mazzella, posted links to two entries on his blog in the comment thread of Franco’s post: as he points out in his comment and one of the referenced posts (published by the Italian national daily Il Fatto Quotidiano on October 19, 2010), widely circulated accounts in Italy’s mainstream press reported that Banfi accepted a plea agreement in the Italian treasury’s “Operation Mixed Wine” investigation (where authorities alleged that certain Brunello producers had adulterated their wines, adding unauthorized grapes). It’s worth noting here that Il Fatto Quotidiano is one of Italy’s leading national newspapers.

The only wineries that were officially “cleared” were Biondi Santi and Col d’Orcia (a fact also widely circulated in the Italian mainstream press).

In fact, even Banfi’s current managing director, Enrico Viglierchio, told the Wine Spectator that the company had agreed to declassify some of its wine in an agreement with investigators (note that the title of the article is “Banfi’s Brunello Cleared”; the wine, not the winery, was “cleared” after the company agreed to declassify certain lots).

The Ghibellines won the battle but lost the war. Ultimately, the battle’s outcome consolidated the Pope’s power in Tuscany and a new era of Florentine and Papal dominance began.

You’ll note that I am merely reporting what has been written in Italy — before and after Mariani’s recent interview (if so inclined, please click on the links above and read my translations of Italian news reports and the report in the Spectator).

Out of respect for Ms. Mariani (and for a good friend of mine who works closely with her), there is no note of sarcasm nor sardonic editorial here.

I would like to address, however, one of her statements. In the interview, she tells wine writer Lettie Teague (one of our country’s most popular enojournalists and author and a super nice lady whom I know through our professional correspondence and tastings we’ve attended together): “If it’s not a health issue, it’s not an issue for consumers…”

She’s right: the appellation regulations that require Brunello producers to use only Sangiovese in their wine were written and approved by the producers themselves to protect the producers and appellation — not the consumer. In other words, the regulations were conceived to protect those producers who play by the rules in an appellation where 80% of the wine was being made with the addition of unauthorized grapes, according to producers association current president Ezio Rivella who served as Banfi’s managing director until 1999 and left the company after working in Montalcino since 1977 (and with the Mariani family since 1961).

The battle and the events and political turmoil that followed (particularly the papacy of Boniface VIII) are central to Dante’s poem, the Comedy, and the overarching mission of his life — to achieve separation of temporal and spiritual powers in Europe, a notion dear to the forefathers of our country (did you know that Thomas Jefferson, a winemaker, spoke and read ancient Italian and could quote the Comedy from memory?).

Why did I incorporate images of the pyramid at Montaperti in this post?

I don’t get to Montaperti every year. In fact, I hadn’t been there in probably 10 years or so. I studied the Battle of Montaperti when I was a graduate student and have been fascinated with it since then. The 1260 battle there is central to Dante’s poem and its political themes. It marked the beginning of Siena’s decline as a world power and an era of political and human upheaval in Tuscany and Italy. (Montalcino is in the province of Siena, btw.)

As for the Sienese Ghibellines who won the battle at Montaperti but ultimately lost the war, their micro-state (city state) was ultimately absorbed by the greater power of Florence. I’ll let the reader infer any analogy that can be made here.

Thanks for reading. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up where we left off, posting about family get togethers and great wines we’ve been drinking with loved ones during the holiday season.

A shout out to Brunello and Do Bianchi in the “Journal”

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Check out Lettie Teague’s Wall Street Journal interview with Cristina Mariani, co-ceo of Banfi who says that the Brunello controversy was “just to make the press.” (I’m not sure what that means.) Lettie also gives a shout out to Do Bianchi and VinoWire. Read the interview here.

And for my latest dispatch from Montalcino, read my post Sunrise with a Brunello Master here.

Why I love Italian wine in flyover country (my Palate Press post)

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Above: I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Gaia Gaja, Angelo Gaja’s daughter, was super fun to hang out with. I interviewed her over Chicago redhots for my PalatePress piece on my encounters with 3 iconic Italian winemakers in “second-tier” American cities.

Alfonso likes to call it “flyover” country: that glorious swath of land, that sweep of the scythe, those amber waves of grain that span from Chicago to the Rio Grande, the Middle West, Mittelamerika, the Third Coast, the Second Cities. In other words, the America that the Left and Right banks often ignore when it comes to the purveyance of fine wine and dining.

I’ll concede that I probably drank more old wine, thanks to the generosity of collectors, when I lived in cities like New York and Los Angeles. But, honestly, my food and wine life has only become more stimulating and rewarding since I moved to Austin, Texas. (Well, everything has become more stimulating and rewarding since Tracie P née B came into my life.)

Above, at dinner in Austin, from left clockwise: Tracie P, Dave Meyer (Banfi, Texas), Mark Sayre (my super good buddy and wine director Trio, Austin), Wes Marshall (The Austin Chronicle) and wife Emily, Lars Leicht (Banfi, whom I’ve known forever), and Rudy Buratti (winemaker, Banfi).

When I realized that I would be having dinner and tasting with 3 iconic Italian winemakers in 3 different “flyover” cities, over the course of just 5 days, I thought it would make a good piece for PalatePress (and thankfully so did the editors!).

Gaia Gaja of Gaja in Chicago, Rudy Buratti of Banfi (and newly elected member of the Brunello producers association 15-person advisory council) in Austin, and Giampiero Bea of Paolo Bea in Houston.

Above: Another pleasant surprise was the 1999 Banfi Brunello (top vineyard) Poggio all’Oro, a wine I would not typically reach for (nor could afford). It was honest and delicious and it tasted like Montalcino. Great wine.

The fact is that top Italian winemakers are traveling more frequently to markets they’ve neglected in the past. I recently found out that Giorgio Rivetti (producer of the infamously created-just-for-the-American-market, jammy, syrupy, ridiculously concentrated Spinetta wines) visited Austin last month. “It’s not often enough that a true gentlemen like Giorgio spends time in Texas,” wrote one wine blogger/merchant.

This is certainly one of the reasons I’ve been lucky enough to have some interesting wine encounters lately.

But then again, as the jingle for the ol’ So Cal franchise Love’s Wood Pit BBQ used to go, when you’re in Love’s, the whole world’s delicious.

Special thanks to Palate Press editor Meg Houston Maker for believing in the piece and eagle-eye editor Becky Sue Epstein for whipping my piece into shape! :-)

More Italian winery designation notes and a clarification from Banfi

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declassified sagrantino

Above: I tasted Paolo Bea’s 2006 declassified Sagrantino the other night in Houston. Winemaker Giampiero Bea was not allowed to label the wine as “Sagrantino,” he told me, because the tasting committee said that the wine “lacked color” and had undergone “slight oxidation.” It was fantastic. Giampiero’s labels are among the most information and most difficult to understand for someone who doesn’t speak and/or read Italian.

This morning, I added the following terms to the May 5 post
A note on Italian winery designations: azienda, cascina, fattoria, podere, et cetera. I thank everyone for the generous support and I hope people will continue to make suggestions/comments/clarifications etc. (special thanks to one of my favorite wine writers, Mitch Frank, for reminding me, via Facebook, about ca’ and casa!).

cantina, literally cellar or cool place to store perishable goods and by extension tavern (probably from the Italian canto meaning angle or corner from the Greek kampthos, bend or angle).

The word cantina has a wide variety of applications in Italy (often used for restaurants and food stores, as well as wineries) and can be found across Italy to denote wine cellar.

casa, literally, a building, house, or habitation (from the Latin casa, a small house, cottage, hut, cabin, shed).

The term casa is used throughout Italy as a winery designation and is often abbreviated as ca’, as in Ca’ del Bosco (it is important to note that it’s often erroneously abbreviated as Cà [using the accent grave diacritic], when in fact the inverted comma [‘] denotes the elision of the final two letters, often derived from a dialectal locution). A casa vinicola (pronounced KAH-sah vee-NEE-koh-lah) is a winery/négociant.

vignaiolo (plural vignaioli), vine tender or grape grower (derived from the Italian vigna, meaning vine, from the Latin vinea, vineyard [from the Latin vinum, wine]).

Pronounced VEEN-y’eye-OH-loh (plural VEEN-y’eye-OH-lee), vignaiolo is used to denote a winery that uses estate-grown fruit in the production of its wines.

I’d also like to draw attention to a important clarification made, in the comment thread, by Fred and Ken Vastola.

An azienda agricola (ah-zee-EHN-dah ah-GREE-koh-lah) is a farming estate, where grapes may or may not be grown for wine production. An azienda vinicola is a winery (or wine business) where grapes are purchased from other farms for wine production. An azienda vinicola (ah-zee-EHN-dah vee-NEE-koh-lah) can also denote a business where wine is purchased and then bottled. As such, the latter designation can be used for a wide range of business models, from the artisanal to the purely commercial.

In other news…

As the world anxiously awaits the results of today’s election of the new advisory committee for the Brunello producers association, a spokesperson from Banfi wrote me yesterday asking me to make this clarification at VinoWire.

Banfi 2004 Brunello, I cannot tell a lie (and other notes and posts on 04 Brunello)

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Tracie B snapped the above pic of me using my Blackberry the other night, when she came home with an open bottle of Banfi 2004 Brunello di Montalcino in her wine bag (when not otherwise occupied being knock-out gorgeous, Tracie B works as a sale representative for a behemoth mid-west and southeastern U.S. wine and spirits distributor).

The moment of truth had arrived: it was time for me to taste the wine with my dinner of Central Market rotisserie chicken, salad, and potatoes that Tracie B had roasted in her grandmother’s iron skillet.

The wine was clear and bright in the glass and had bright acidity and honest fruit flavor. The tannin, while present, was not out of balance and the wine had a slightly herbaceous note in the finish that might not please lovers of modern-style wines but that I enjoy. If ever there were a wine made with 100% Sangiovese grapes, I would say this were one — tasted covertly or overtly.

According to WineSearcher.com, the average retail price for this wine in the U.S. is $65. I can’t honestly say that I recommend the wine: it’s not a wine that I personally look for at that price point. I did not find this to be a great or original or terroir-driven wine but I will say that it is an honest expression of Sangiovese from Montalcino.

Anyone who reads my blog (or follows news from the world of Italian wine), knows that Banfi has been the subject of much controversy over the last year and a half. But fair is fair and rules are rules and I cannot conceal that I enjoyed the 04 Brunello by Banfi. (Btw, Italian Wine Guy, who is Glazer’s Italian Wine Director, recently posted on 04 Brunello, including a YouTube of Banfi media director Lars Leight speaking on the winery’s current releases at a wine dinner in Dallas.)

Above: Facing south from Il Poggione’s vineyards below Sant’Angelo in Colle, looking toward Mt. Amiata.

Despite the will of some marketers to make us think otherwise, 2004 was not an across-the-board great vintage in Montalcino. In my experience with the wines so far, only those with the best growing sites were able to make great wines in the classic style of Montalcino and wines that really taste like Montalcino.

Btw, in all fairness, it’s important to note that the Banfi vineyards lie — to my knowledge — primarily in the southwest subzone of the appellation, one of the historic growing areas for great Sangiovese. When you drive south from Sant’Angelo in Colle, you see signs for the Banfi vineyards on the right. Earlier this year, my friend Ale over at Montalcino Report posted this excellent series on understanding the terroir of Montalcino using Google Earth. It’s one of the best illustrations of why the wines from that part of the appellation are always among the best, even in difficult years. (Ale’s killer Il Poggione 04 Brunello, which I tasted for the first time at Vinitaly in April, received such glowing praise from one of the world’s greatest wine writers that it caused near pandemonium in the market, prompting wine sales guru Jon Rimmerman to write that it “may be the most offered/reacted to wine I’ve ever witnessed post-Wine Advocate review.”)

Above: Facing north in Il Poggione’s vineyards, looking at the village of Sant’Angelo in Colle (literally, Sant’Angelo “on the hill”).

Franco recently tasted 93 bottlings of 04 Brunello at the offices of The World of Fine Wine in London and wrote of his disappointment with the wines delivered by even some of the top producers. Here are Franco’s top picks and straight-from-the-hip notes, posted at VinoWire.

In other news…

One of the greatest moments of personal fulfillment in my life was when my band NN+’s debut album reached #6 in the college radio charts so I guess that stranger things have happened: a colleague in Italy emailed me last week to let me know that my blog Do Bianchi was ranked #9 in the official (?) list of “top wine blogs.” Who knew?

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to read Do Bianchi. The blog has been such a rewarding experience for me and it means so much to me that there are people out there who enjoy it.

Monty Waldin on Decanter’s claim that Banfi has been “cleared of Brunello adulteration”

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In case you don’t know him already, “Monty Waldin, a British wine writer who has been living in Italy for the last few years, is one of the best known commentators on (and advocates of) biodynamic wine growing.” — Jamie Goode

Here’s just part of what British television wine personality and wine writer Monty Waldin had to say about Decanter’s post on Friday claiming that Banfi has been “cleared of Brunello adulteration”:

    Decanter also swallowed a press release last year in which Brunello’s biggest winery Banfi declared itself as innocent — when this was absolutely not the case as the Siena prosecutor subsequently made perfectly clear. Although some (most in fact) of the wineries who were investigated have not been charged others — perhaps with something to hide, perhaps not — have taken the option of plea bargaining pre-trial (a perfectly legitimate option in Italy if you, ahem, feel you may have broken the “Brunello must be 100% Sangiovese” rule).

Monty posted his thoughts on Jancis Robinson’s pay-per-view site and Franco was gracious enough to repost them at Vino al Vino.

Read the entire post here.

Evidently, Franco and I are not the only ones outraged by Decanter’s egregiously disinformational post. Today, I’m trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened in their editorial offices. Stay tuned…

Wineries named in Brunello investigation

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i_heart

The server that hosts VinoWire is having problems today and so I’m unable to post there but I will do a detailed post asap.

Today’s Florence edition of the Italian national daily La Repubblica reports the names of the seven wineries investigated in the Brunello inquiry, dubbed by Italian authorities, “Operazione Mixed Wine” or “Operation Mixed Wine.” The five that were found by the Italian Treasury Department to have bottled wine “not in conformity with appellation regulations” are: Antinori, Argiano, Banfi, Casanova di Neri, and Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi. According to the article, Biondi Santi and Col d’Orcia were also investigated by were cleared by investigators of any wrongdoing.

On the eve of Vinitaly, a push to create a Montalcino DOC (and reflections on a year past)

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Above: Franco Ziliani (left), my friend and co-editor of VinoWire, and Mauro Mascarello, winemaker and producer of one of the greatest expressions of Nebbiolo, Giuseppe Mascarello Barolo. We tasted at Vinitaly last year together. This year, Franco and I will be tasting together at Vini Veri.

Passover and Easter will shortly be upon us and the who’s who of Italian wine is preparing to descend on the province of Verona for our industry’s annual trade fairs: Vinitaly (the largest and most commercial), Vini Veri (a gathering of natural winemakers and the most interesting in my opinion), and VinNatur (an assembly of winemakers who broke away from Vini Veri some years back). I’m particularly excited for Vini Veri because this year’s tasting sees the unification of Vini Veri with the Nicolas Joly biodynamic and quasi-biodynamic tastings, Triple A and Renaissance du Terroir (Return to Terroir).

Above: The Banfi Castle at last year’s Vinitaly. There were rumors — unfounded and untrue — that Banfi’s wines were seized on the floor of the fair last year. I am looking forward to tasting the 2004 Brunello di Montalcino by Banfi. Charles Scicolone and Tom Hyland — whose palates I respect greatly — have both told me that it’s classic Brunello, 100% Sangiovese, and one of the best wines Banfi has ever produced.

It’s remarkable to think that at this time last year, the world of Italian wine was gripped by the breaking news of the Brunello scandal: at least five major producers were accused of adulterating their wines from the 2003 vintage. A year has passed, a large quantity of wine has reportedly been declassified, and no indictments have been issued by the Siena prosecutor who supposedly launched the investigation in September of 2007.

It’s not surprising, however, that there has been a new push — albeit weak — within the association of Brunello producers to create a Montalcino DOC. Last week, a proposal to create such an appellation was put to the floor at the consortium’s assembly. (I haven’t been able to find out the results of the vote but according to most observers, it was unlikely that it would be ratified.)

Above: I am always geeked to taste Paolo Bea Sagrantino with Giampiero Bea at Vini Veri (I snapped this photo at last year’s fair). Tracie B and I have been enjoying his Santa Chiara 2006. It’s radically different than his 2005 and I hope to ask him about the vintage variation. (Is it the result of climatic differences or differences in the cellar? I imagine — knowing Giampiero and his radical belief in natural winemaking — that the former is the case.)

Currently, Montalcino producers must label their wines as Toscana IGT or Sant’Antimo DOC if they contain grapes other than Sangiovese. If approved, a Montalcino DOC would allow them to exploit the Montalcino “brand” in their labeling of so-called Super Tuscan wines. The proposed DOC is part of a greater push to create new Italian appellations before OCM reforms take effect in August 2009 and the power to issue new DOCs shifts from Rome to Brussels.

Above: This year, the world of Italian wine mourns the loss of Teobaldo Cappellano (photo courtesy of Polaner). Baldo, as he was known fondly, was one of the founders of the Vini Veri movement and one of Italy’s most zealous defenders and promoters of terroir-driven wines and natural winemaking. He was a truly delightful man and is sorely missed.

There’s a reason why the fairs are held at this time of year: historically and traditionally, the spring marks the moment when winemakers unveil their cellared wines. Long before the hegemony of the Judeo-Christian canon, spring was observed as Mother Nature’s moment of renewal and rebirth.

The ancient allegory — and it is an allegory, not a metaphor — could not be more apt this year.

Par condicio: enthusiastic tasting notes on 2004 Brunello by Banfi

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Above: A political cartoon poking fun at Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi who called a fan a “ball breaker” at a rally last year.

The Latin expression par condicio is used in contemporary Italian to denote “equal air time.” (See my explanation of its origin here.)

In keeping with our “fair and balanced” policy of reporting Italian wine news, Franco and I have published this enthusiastic review of the 2004 Brunello di Montalcino by Banfi by our friend, respected colleague, and Italian wine authority Charles Scicolone at VinoWire. Charles called it “classical” in style and “the best Brunello that Banfi has ever produced.”

I haven’t tasted the wine yet but am looking forward to tasting it at the earliest opportunity and I will promptly post my tasting notes.

Another authority on Italian wine, Kyle Phillips, also gave the wine a good review in his excellent overview of 2004 Brunello. I really like what Kyle had to say about the annus horribilis in Montalcino and how the 2004 bottlings tend toward “garnet” in color as opposed to the opacity favored by certain producers in the past:

    It is quite possible that those who in the past bent the rules, adding other things to make their Brunello more appealing to the international markets before bottling it (while some people to blend wines made from several varietals at the outset, many prefer to keep the varietals separate until bottling, because doing so allows them more control over the wine) decided to forego the practice, and I cannot but view this development favorably, as I think that a well-made Sangiovese has no need of crutches. I also think it is sad that it took the concrete threat of criminal investigation to deter the practice, and can only hope that garnet will continue to be as prevalent in future vintages as it was in this one.

I, too, hope that “garnet will continue to be prevalent” and — to borrow a phrase from James Suckling — that Montalcino producers will continue to “let Brunello be Brunello.” (For the record, Suckling liked the 04 Brunello by Banfi as well and gave it 93/100 points.)