Wine & sport, with the 5-star Brunello on the podium with Malagò and narrated by Buffa

”If in the past it was unthinkable, today fortunately sport and wine overlap. We are two Italian excellences, two authentic passions, and finally, while before there were many clichés to be debunked that concerned health first of all, today thanks to nutritionists and research we know that drinking a good glass of red wine is good for sportsmen too. And you may not believe this, but we won Milano Cortina 2026 also thanks to the atmosphere that makes us unique and that we create at Casa Italia, where you can taste a wonderful Brunello with the dishes of our greatest chefs”. This was said by the president of Coni Giovanni Malagò, the highest Italian sports authority, testimonial of Brunello with the signature of the iconic tile, to “Benvenuto Brunello” in Montalcino, which celebrates the 5 stars - the highest rating - at the last vintage, 2019, toasting a dream vintage like the Olympic dream of the Tokyo 2020 Games and, above all, waiting for the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. “When you win a Gold Medal at the Olympics or the World Championships - said Malagò - think of those young champions who after so many sacrifices and emotions, in a journey that starts from afar, today are our excellence. Merit, technique, but above all a great passion. And this seems to be the story of Brunello”. A story told also by one of the greatest Italian storytellers, Federico Buffa, from the World Stories, a cult on Sky, to the story, for the first time, of a wine, with “Condannato ad essere unico (Condemned to be unique)”, a play dedicated to Brunello, premiered today in Montalcino.
“When I drink wine I think of what was the first toast in history, a very ancient gesture, to sanction alliances and recall fortune, born with the complicity of wine, the greatest celebration of conviviality. But it could also have been the solitary gesture of a single man who, pleased with his work, raising his glass among the vineyards, thanked Mother Earth for the product she gave him. And I like to imagine that it happened in Montalcino”. This is the beginning of Buffa’s story, a curious journey in the history of Montalcino that becomes that of Brunello, among anecdotes and characters, like “the telephone that, we are in the Sixties, rings at the Enoteca Trimani in Rome because President Saragat, a famous wine lover, would like that magnificent Brunello that he had tasted for the first time in London, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth’s wedding, the Riserva Biondi Santi 1955”, which, later, Wine Spectator delivered to the legend, among the 12 wines of the century. A journey that starts from the first document that, more than a thousand years ago, talks about Montalcino, and tells how the Etruscans, the founders, were the first to realize the uniqueness of the territory. Intuition, the key to Montalcino’s success, collected by an enterprising entrepreneurial middle class, independent and impassive even though disputed by the powers of the time, the Ghibelline Siena and the Guelph Florence, who had always been skillful in trade along the Via Francigena, but only later with wine, the first traces of which date back to the mid fourteenth century about Moscadello. And, later, it is always that same intuition, which is at the basis of the choice at the end of the nineteenth century to focus everything on Sangiovese, even when, in the mid-twentieth century, poverty and the end of sharecropping led to industrialization, “and thanks to the Tancredi Biondi Santi, Giovanni Colombini and Giovanni Ciacci, until the consecration by Veronelli who, tasting Brunello, for the first time, called it Supertuscan”. From then on, the world begins to notice Brunello, and if Montalcino wine goes around the world, gaining approval and recognition at the highest levels, the world comes to Montalcino, of wine, but also of culture, politics, art. And if the rest is history, the future is also written in this story, and it is made “by the visions of many young winemakers, concentrated here exceptionally en masse, but always starting from that intuition, which unites the fruits of the earth with the work of man”.

Focus - Brunello rewards restaurants and wine bars that tell the world about it
With its 5 stars at the last harvest, 2019, Brunello is also reminiscent of the 5 Olympic circles, as well as being a Made in Italy champion in restaurants around the world, from London to New York and San Francisco, according to a Nomisma Wine Monitor survey, on stage today in Montalcino. Where, to reward them for their wine list, with the “Leccio d’Oro”, is the Consorzio del Brunello: the Adler Spa Thermae Resort in San Quirico d'Orcia, the Enoteca Italiana in Bologna, Ferraro’s in Las Vegas and Praelum in Singapore. And if an award went to Ilio Raffaelli, mayor of Montalcino from 1960 to 1980, for having contributed to the growth of the territory and the diffusion of the culture of Brunello, for the first time, Rosso di Montalcino also launched its own recognition, awarding Signorvino, the wine chain of the Calzedonia Group, with stores throughout Italy, which “focuses on passion and simplicity to spread the culture of wine among young people”, said the director Luca Pizzighella. Just like the “younger brother”, but not too much, of Brunello.