2017 saw a challenging vintage in Montalcino, but you’d never know it from Canalicchio di Sopra’s radiant, layered ’17 Rosso di Montalcino. Super-ripe berries and tart cherries dance with underbrush, smoky minerals, new leather, crushed wildflowers, and touches of herbs, dusty spices and blood orange zest in this captivating wine. Silky tannins meld with the wine’s brisk acidity and both linger on the wine’s food-friendly finish. This ’17 Rosso offers an open-knit, silky invitation to early drinking, yet you’ll be able to drink it over the medium term. Deriving primarily from fruit grown on the estate’s youngest vines, the grapes ferment in temperature-controlled stainless steel for about two weeks; the wine ages for a year in a combination of oak vats and barriques.
- Country: Italy
- Region: Toscana
- Subregion/Appellation: Rosso di Montalcino
Founded in the sixties by Primo Pacenti, Canalicchio di Sopra remains family-owned. Its establishment represented a substantive risk, as Pacenti, a peasant farmer up until the abolition of the sharecropping system, possessed little in the way of security. The Brunellos of the estate largely reflect the wine’s historical paradigm, a character derived, in part, through 36 months of cask aging, and 1 year in bottle. Although Brunellos are generally regarded as more pronounced in character than the wines of Chianti, such a generic and broad description is more convenient than it is accurate. Distinctions in climate and soil between the northern and southern parts of the Montalcino zone account for important differences. The northern zone, the area relative to Canalicchio, evidences a cooler climate than that of its southern counterpart; this northern terrain receives limited exposure to both the Mediterranean influence of Montalcino and the cooling breezes that the latter’s high altitude affords, resulting in wines that display impressive ripeness and structure.
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