Valdicava, Rosso di Montalcino, 2005. Pretty spectacular.Peter and I visited the estate in Montalcino last May and it was a lackluster experience. The wines tasted barnyardy and the wine maker seemed annoyed by me when I spit the wines out. He actually said, "If you were in Burgundy tasting Musigny they would kick you out of the cellar." To which I wanted to say, "Well, I WISH your wines tasted like Musigny, but they are full of BRETT!"
And then a weird thing happened. We came back to the states opened a half bottle that Vincenzo, the winemaker, had given us. The wine was delicious, sort of more than delicious, it was fantastic! And this wine is no exception. It is full of fresh cherries, terrific acidity and has a very silky chalky mouthfeel. Oddly, there's no sign of brettanomyces - that barnyard / fecal odor that's so offensive to me. Wonder what happened to it??
Regardless, I am a fan. you can pick this up for $33.99 at Wally's in LA and Wine Pavilion in the OC.
2 comments:
So, can a wine show brett as a sign of youth then? And then go away?
No, it could only get worse. Once brett gets into wine its there to stay. The only way to potentially remove it is to filter before bottling, and maybe he did that. And the bigger issue is - once it's in the winery it's almost impossible to eradicate.
Peter and I were just blown away by how different the wines are from bottle. Tasting from cask they were so dried out - as a yeast brett "eats" all the polysaccharides / complex sugars that remain in wine after fermentation and so the mouthfeel on every single wine we tasted (without exception)was astringent and unpleasant, as well as aromatically challenged! And when we drank both the half bottle of 2001 Brunello and the bottle of Rosso last weekend - we were shocked at how amazing the wines are. I mean, it was a significant portion of our dinner conversation.
We can't figure it out. Maybe he did filter, but that doesn't explain the fresh, chalky round mouthfeel. Nothing dried out about these wines.
I guess we will wait until the newest releases come out - I am going to keep drinking the wines until I have a reason not to!
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