Who knows? One day, you might find yourself live on TV, taking part in a competition. Imagine: you’re in 2nd place, there are only 5 points between you and the person in 1st place. The host asks you to pick a category. You smile broadly and pick ‘the Brunello category’ because the night before, you came across a website called ‘Consigli di vini’ and read about it there.
Thanks to that, you know that:
1. Brunello di Montalcino is a dark red wine made from the Brunello grape (a variety of the Sangiovese grape), and that ‘Brunello’ means ‘little dark one’.
2. It is produced in Montalcino, a small Tuscan village.
3. It was first created by a man named Clement Santi in the mid 19th century.
4. It’s regarded as one of the most expensive wines (and considered to be the best) in Italy. Oh yes.
5. The wine must be made from 100% unadulterated Brunello grapes. Nothing less.
6. Because it is high in tannins, it has a longer shelf life (and gets even better with age).
7. Though the Blondi-Santi family remained the sole producers of this wine for quite some time, this changed and there are now over 200 winemakers who are allowed to produce it. This is still quite exclusive when compared with other wines.
8. Brunello wine cannot be sold until 50 months (just over 4 years) after the grapes used to make it were harvested. Out of that time, it must have been aged for at least 2 years in oak and at least 4 months in a bottle.
9. A cheaper and lighter alternative to the Brunello di Montalcino is Rosso di Montalcino. The best selection of Brunello grapes are used in the former, and the rest (which are still very good quality) go into producing the latter. Rosso wine can be aged for less time – a year – before it can be sold.
(img by: dags1974)