2011 Sesti Brunello di Montalcino

Sesti’s new Brunello is seductive, tuned up, honed to perfection, and screaming out of the Brunellian gates. It can be enjoyed immediately or savored for many years (store it in a good cellar). There is nothing quite like a great bottle of Brunello when it is ripe for the picking.

Start with its deep, luscious nose. The wine is savory, thick, juicy, wonderfully saucy, almost truffly, with a sensation of freshly turned earth. In my notes taken while tasting it for the first time in April at the Castello di Argiano, Sesti’s hilltop estate, I compared it to a vinous ragù that has been cooked down for a long time with tomatoes and herbs. “Drink with pasta as if sauce,” I wrote. (You should probably still include the pasta sauce.) It also possesses a lovely tannin that is fine and thirst-enhancing with zero aggression.

There are so many Brunelli out there to choose from these days. We think this is one of the very best, and it never disappoints. Proprietor Giuseppe Sesti, an astronomer from Venice who has been deeply involved in his own blend of organic/biodynamic/cosmic viticulture ever since he purchased his estate in the seventies, explained the secret of his land to me recently: “The ancients talked of the aria buona di Argiano [good air of Argiano]. The castello is perched on a promontory surrounded by two valleys that channel cooling winds from the Mediterranean up to the vineyards, keeping the vines cool throughout the summer despite the sometimes scorching heat.” This is one of the most important keys to the perennial freshness of Sesti’s Brunello: with wine—as in real estate—location, location, location. –Dixon Brooke