The 2020 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva Madonna delle Grazie, the first Riserva since 2013, is a deep garnet color with a wildly expressive bouquet. Notes of crushed raspberries and cherries come together with spiced orange peels, balsam herbs, cloves and white smoke. This is deeply textural and seductive, enveloping the palate with velvety textures and masses of ripe wild berry fruits and spices. A core of brilliant acidity enlivens the experience, and its minerality comes through in the dramatically long, crunchy finish. A saturation of plums and currants mingle with beautifully contoured tannins. Is this a masterpiece in the making? Only time will tell. The 2020 will be bottled in June 2025, and there will only be 1000 magnums of this majestic beast.

The Il Marroneto 2020 Brunello di Montalcino Madonna delle Grazie (tasted once in the winery and again in my office) is another classical expression of Sangiovese from vintner Alessandro Mori and his son Iacopo. This vintage is best described as more charming compared to the stacked 2019 vintage or the powerful 2016 edition. This is a very pretty wine, elegant and finessed, with pretty floral highlights of rose and violet that lean into a subtle menthol note. There is caramelized sugar and candied orange. The wine lives in oak for 46 months with just a brief time in steel before going into bottle (at the end of July 2024). This vintage is a little closed or tight in terms of mouthfeel, which suggests it needs more time in bottle to spread its wings.

This single-vineyard Brunello is one of the gems of the denomination. The 2020 reflects the vintage conditions wonderfully, trading in the generosity of 2019 for a more structured and thought-provoking wine. ‘2015 and '16 is like '19 and '20 – the exact same combination’, comments Alessandro Mori. Fragrantly perfumed with potpourri and a hint of spice, it's a bright and vital Sangiovese of impeccable precision and poise. Its youthful creaminess supports freshly picked blackberry, intense dark cherry and some sotto bosco notes, with a streak of salinity and some floral uplift to counterpoint its framework of silky, structural tannins and vertical shape. While less immediately striking than the 2019 was at the same stage, this may shine even brighter in the years to come.

Deep youthful ruby. Rich black forest fruits and sour-cherry and raspberry nose. Full and deep and complex. Suave, dense and spread out on the palate but with the perfect dose of acidity and fine tannins that stay under the fruit almost as an understatement. Hedonistic and cerebral at the same time. Exuberant but much too young. (WS)

The second of three selections from the vineyard, the 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva Madonna Delle Grazie is a stunning wine and is poised to become the second-ever release of a Riserva wine from the estate. (The first was 2013.) Tasted from a single barrel of production, it is still alive with active reduction nearly three years on that will take time to fully resolve. After several moments in the glass, it opens to remarkable concentration and potent depth that has nearly port-like decadence only countered by its chiseled and weightless feel. It offers a haunting and musky perfume that lasts for ages, alongside a balanced yet full arching profile. Not for the faint of heart, this wine floods the senses with a lavish appeal, yet somehow maintains restraint and freshness, with a prolonged underlying tension. This was my first time visiting the Il Marroneto estate, and everything I tasted there was from barrels, led by winemaker Alessandro Mori’s son, Iacopo, while the 2018s were tasted from bottle back home in New York. The winery was established in 1974, when Alessandro’s father, who was originally from Siena, was looking to create a small winery. He was encouraged by a priest in Montalcino to take a look at a church property on the northern side of the town, with its exposition overlooking Siena, and found the home for his winery. Today, the Mori family’s approach to the vineyard and the winery remains traditional in that they work by more natural methods of temperature control, they do not implement green harvesting of the vines, and they do not work the soil, looking for nature itself to create its selection. The ground here is 75% sand, the ideal soil for Sangiovese. Today they own eight hectares of vineyard, with their prime holdings just outside the winery, the two hectares that make up Modanna delle Grazie, at 440 meters above sea level. All of their vineyards have a northern exposition, which is important for the cold winds in the early evening and through the night.