Pacenti’s 2006 Rosso di Montalcino is a sleek, lush wine loaded with soft-textured fruit that flows onto the palate with remarkable elegance and finesse. With air it gains weight and expansiveness in a gorgeous display of Rosso. As is often the case, Giancarlo Pacenti’s Rosso di Montalcino is among the finest wines of the region, although in this vintage he has more competition, which suggests producers are paying more attention to the quality of their Rossos. Anticipated maturity: 2008-2011. Giancarlo Pacenti is among the small number of producers who doesn’t bottle single-vineyard wines, instead he prefers to blend the juice from his holdings across the zone to make one Brunello, which he thinks yields a wine with greater balance than single-vineyard wines are capable of. Tasting his wines, the 2003 Brunello in particular, its awfully hard to disagree with this approach. Pacenti believes his long-standing collaboration with the University of Bordeaux paid huge dividends in 2003. Pacenti reported that, as expected, his oldest vineyards held up best during the scorching-hot vintage. Between the small amount of juice the grapes contained and the burnt fruit that was tossed at the sorting table, yields were down about 35%. Fermentation was done at lower temperatures than normal in order to avoid extracting astringent tannins. Pacenti also reduced the amount of new oak to 50-60% from the more typical 70-80%, using the higher percentages of new oak for his oldest vineyards. The Brunello was aged in a cellar kept to a lower temperature than normal in order to slow down the wine’s development. As outstanding as the Brunello is, readers should not ignore the 2006 Rosso. Importer: Michael Skurnik, Syosset, NY; tel. (516) 677-9300

A precise Rosso, with clean berry notes and hints of violet and oak. Medium-bodied, with a delicate but persistent finish. Drink now. 4,000 cases made, 1,200 cases imported.??–null??Region: Italy / Rosso di Montalcino Select to Add