This past November, ’17, Josée and I hosted a tasting group blind tasting of seven Brunello (!) wines. Here are our tasting notes: Brunello di Montalcino 2017 Nov 14 Tasting Group, including a list of the tasted wines.
For the food portion, we had a spread of nuts, olives, cheeses, and bread. Plus Josée made Arancini, which was excellent and I made roasted veggies.
Ally and I had just been in Brunello for a wedding (we don’t get to too many of those lately!). It was such fun: we arrived just as The 2017 Lucifer heat wave ended. Literally: as we walked out of the Florence airport to our rental car, a huge and violent lightning and thunder storm broke the heat. We drove (through driving rain) through Montalcino down to Bagno Vignoni, a lovely spa village in the South of Tuscany, where our friends were getting married. In Bagno Vignoni, there was excellent walking on the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrim walk from London to Jerusalem that runs right through the village. After the happy event of the wedding (held right on the watery square!), we headed to Siena for a prelude to Palio de Siena. We arrived before the official day of the Palio, and had no idea there was a huge run up series of pre-races to the actual, final Palio. So Siena was crowded … but also exciting and fun. Enthusiastic Italian pride at it’s tip top expression! After Siena, we drove on an extremely winding road to the Tuscan coast for a few days. Then back to Florence for a night and home.
The point is, Brunello was fresh in mind: Brunello di Montalcino has such great, expressive and yet fine wine.
