ANDREA COSTANTI'S NOTES

Brunello 2003 (PREVIEW), On the market in 2008

Consorzio Rating: 4 stars

Notes: very hot and dry year. Harvest started on September 10th, the earliest in Costanti history. A very important wine but not to be aged for a very long time.

Brunello 2001 Riserva

Consorzio Rating: 4 Stars

Notes: very regular season. Perfect grapes in the sugar-acidity ratio. Harvest at the end of September. Level of 2001 wines in Montalcino superior to the harvest expectations. 2001 Costanti Reserve is a wine to lay down.

Brunello 2000

Consorzio Rating: 3 Stars

Notes: a very hot summer with some rain at the end of August. Harvest end of September. Very ready wines, pleasant from the beginning, not to be aged for a long time.

Brunello 1997

Consorzio Rating: 5 Stars

Notes: historic harvest in Montalcino deemed the greatest of the XX century. Perfect season, grapes of great structure and balance. Mid-September harvest. The Reserve is still quite a young wine which has yet to express most of its tertiary bouquet. This wine is destined to lay down.

Brunello 1995

Consorzio Rating: 5 Stars

Notes: 5 it is the only great harvest with late picking due to cold and rainy months of August and beginning of September. After the first week in September the seasonal progress was perfect with a mid-October harvest.

Brunello 1988 Riserva

Consorzio Rating: 5 Stars

Notes: one of the 5-star harvests of the 1980s, great harvest picked at the end of September. The Riserva already has a maturity which allows it to express the typical tertiary bouquet of Brunello of great harvests. It still has a long life ahead of it.

 The production of a “Reserve”, as we have been taught by Franco Biondi Santi, is part of the tradition of Brunello di Montalcino, more than the cru or single-vineyard wines.

Given that Brunello is an extremely important wine, when I decide to make a Reserve I always have to be sure that what I have is outstanding, absolutely fabulous: the best Brunello in an exceptional year, one of those that occur about three times in each decade.

A Reserve must also be seen as a Brunello with a very long cellar-life, a wine capable of ageing for decades. Consequently, a young Brunello Reserve is always much more tannic and characterised by greater acidity, requiring a certain number of years of bottle-ageing.    

Drawn from Costanti Brunello marc within 48 hours of racking, it is distilled in the artisan distillery of Gioacchino Cannoni in Paganico using an intermittent four-columned low-grade steam system.

After distillation within 48 hours of racking, the grappa is aged for one year in oak casks followed by an ageing period in apple, pear and wild cherry wood barrels. It is then further aged in the bottle for more than a year.