Brunello di Montalcino, the vintage entering the market to be judged by an external “working group”

Madeleine Stenwreth (Sweden), Justin Knock (U.K.), Michelle Cherutti-Kowal (U.K.), Tracey Dobbin (France), Frank Roeder (Germany) and Philip Goodband (U.S.), as well as Italians Gabriele Gorelli and Andrea Lonardi: they are the “Masters of Wine”, to whom the Consorzio del Brunello di Montalcino has entrusted the judgment on the vintage that goes on sale (while in the past, until 2021, a rating in stars, from 1 to 5, was assigned on the vintage just harvested, ed.), changing format, with a new tool entrusted to an external team of “super experts”, with blind tastings of Brunello di Montalcino 2020 samples, at the end of a project developed in several phases: meteorological, analytical and sensory.
“The working group of the new project, led by the Consortium's board of directors and formed by expert climatologists, specialists in territorial analysis and international tasters, has created an innovative method of evaluation that takes into account the factors of great heterogeneity and identity that characterize the denomination. The system devised combines objective data related to the climatic trends of the different vintages, the consequences that the seasons have on the vegetative-productive behavior of the Sangiovese variety and the subjective sensations of a representative sample of tasters to perceive and enhance the peculiarities of the different vintages,” explains a note from the Consorzio del Brunello. The vintage analysis will be unveiled at “Benvenuto Brunello” in the event that, from November 14 to 18, will feature tastings of the 2020 vintage and the 2019 Riserva, which enter the market in 2025.
For this project, the Consorzio del Brunello, as mentioned, relied on the Italian Masters of Wine, Gabriele Gorelli and Andrea Lonardi, and Copernico, a Montalcino-based company that deals with “high tech farming”: “this model, built and developed for Montalcino, represents a tool to better track in a contemporary way the high quality, the continuous stylistic renewal of the appellation as well as the challenges and effects generated by climate change”, comment Gorelli & Lonardi, “a method that also allows the territory and the companies to communicate in an identity-driven way”.
“After abandoning in 2021 the judgment expressed by the number of stars for the November anticipation of “Benvenuto Brunello”, it was necessary to define a new paradigm of analysis of the vintage that is no longer merely quantitative but based on objective, authoritative and non-self-referential data”, explains, in a press note, the president of the Consortium, Fabrizio Bindocci, “for the first time, a Consortium of protection also entrusts the reading of its flagship wine to an external team of experts, who can change with each edition. This is an innovation that will allow Montalcino producers to present themselves on the market on the basis of a solid and contemporary evaluation model that takes into account climate change, current style and Brunello consumption trends”.