BRUNELLO: CONTROL MEASURES AND UNPRECEDENTED PROCEDURES. A ‘GUARANTEE BOARD’ CREATED AND, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ITALY, PRODUCERS OF MONTALCINO INTRODUCE ANALYTICAL TECHNOLOGIES AND METHODS TO GUARANTEE DOCG QUALITY. SALES OK: UP 16% OVER 2007 SALES

May 30 may become a historic date for Montalcino and for Italian wine in general. The results of an assembly of the Brunello Consortium were made public with a press release: “With a large majority, the producers of Brunello voted to push ahead a definite change for the Italian wine sector by approving the introduction of analytical technologies and methods to guarantee one of the best known DOCG red wines”.

“The decision to introduce, for the first time in Italy, analytical methods for controlling wine, was made together with the Minister of Agriculture and the Chamber of Commerce of Siena, who will both be flanking the Brunello Consortium with representatives on the ‘Guarantee Board’, which will define the analytical parameters and tools to guarantee the purity of the use of the Sangiovese grape that is required by the discipline”.

The note, written by Barabino & Partners, also explained that, “The ‘Guarantee Board’, made up of three people with delegates of specific competencies, will include consultations by specialist technicians of international importance from the enology, biology, and agriculture sectors; and this concrete and pragmatic solution was reached through a meeting between the Brunello Consortium and the government, thanks to the efforts of the undersecretary of the Agricultural Ministry, Antonio Bonfiglio”.

“The decision made during the Consortium assembly confirms the respect of the ‘disciplinary’ with the introduction today, and for the future, of the best and most innovative controlling tools and procedures that the scientific world has to offer in order to guarantee, among other things, four priorities: purity of Sangiovese in Brunello; the conformity to the winemaking techniques from the vineyard to production processes; traditional ageing in wood; the typicalness and origin of wine in territorial terms”.

“The Brunello di Montalcino Consortium assembly also retains that the decision made is in the direction of a response to the requests made by the U.S. TTB – The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau – in order to ensure a guarantee for the distribution of the 2003 vintage on the U.S. market”.

The Consortium president, Francesco Marone Cinzano, stated during the assembly that, “the hypothetical evaluation of eventual restrictive measures made on the importation of Brunello to the United States will be the object a meeting in Siena with a TTB delegation during the week of June 9th”.
”Today, by adopting analytical methods as a guarantee, which could represent a milestone in the guidelines for the guarantee of certifications of all Italian wines, Brunello di Montalcino and its producers have, once again, created another ‘first’ in the legislation of Italian viticulture.

And the producers of Brunello di Montalcino have had many other ‘firsts’ in Italy: it obtained the delimitation of territory of production by the state government in the 1930’s; in 1966, the introduction of the first DOC ‘disciplinary’ in Italy; Brunello received the DOCG denomination in 1980; in 1992, it introduced the criteria for the evaluation of quality of vintages with a 1 to 5 star rating; and in 1994, it registered the DOCG denomination as a commercial brand.

Far from the many problems that have recently erupted, there is good news on the business front: Brunello will have probably registered a ‘sold out’ period up to May, 2008, for which it is estimated about 4,980,000 bottles will have been sold, compared to the 2,860,000 sold in 2007, which refers to the 2002 vintage, considered mediocre by producers. This signifies a +16% over the total/year in production and is further proof of the growing success of the sales of Brunello di Montalcino and the authority and notoriety of the ‘brand’, independent of recent legal events.