Camigliano Brunello di Montalcino 2020 Review

There are bottles that quietly expose a fairly sizeable hole in your wine knowledge.

The Camigliano Brunello di Montalcino 2020 was very much that.

I’d been looking forward to opening this. Brunello is one of those names that carries a bit of weight before you’ve even pulled the cork, and with my experience of Tuscan Sangiovese having been heavily influenced by Super Tuscans, I thought I had a reasonable idea of what was coming.

I absolutely didn’t.

Not the Brunello I Had in My Head

My expectation was for something fairly substantial. Dark fruit, plenty of structure and that sort of weight I associate with some of the Tuscan wines I’ve really enjoyed.

Instead, the first thing that surprised me was just how elegant this was.

There was a delicacy to the wine that I genuinely wasn’t expecting. If you’d asked me to compare the body and general feel to another grape, my immediate thought would have been Pinot Noir rather than a Bordeaux blend.

That threw me slightly.

I think I’d subconsciously lumped Brunello together with the broader world of serious Tuscan reds without properly considering what makes Brunello fundamentally different.

In the Glass

Once I’d got over my expectations, though, this was absolutely delicious.

The fruit sits very much in that red-fruited world rather than giving you a massive wallop of dark fruit. There’s lovely cherry running through it, with a savoury edge underneath and enough complexity to keep drawing you back to the glass.

The acidity is probably what really defines it for me. It gives the wine this beautiful freshness and keeps everything moving, while the tannins provide structure without making the wine feel particularly heavy.

And that was the revelation.

The wine doesn’t need huge concentration or a massive mouthfeel to feel serious. Everything is there, it’s just delivered with far more finesse than I’d expected.

I Blame the Super Tuscans

Part of my confusion comes from drinking wines where Sangiovese shares the stage with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc or Merlot.

Those wines can be enormous. They can have the dark fruit, concentration and structure that immediately sends your brain towards Bordeaux.

Brunello di Montalcino is a completely different proposition. This is Sangiovese on its own, and tasting it in this form made me realise how much of what I had associated with Tuscan Sangiovese was actually coming from the other varieties and the style of those wines.

It sounds obvious written down. In the glass it felt like a genuine lightbulb moment.

This is exactly why I enjoy tasting wine properly rather than simply deciding whether something is nice or not. Every now and again you open something that recalibrates your understanding of a grape.

This bottle did that for Sangiovese.

Give It Some Time

It’s also worth remembering that this is a 2020 Brunello. There’s plenty of life ahead of it, and I’d be fascinated to come back to another bottle with more age.

Right now, though, its relative youth didn’t stop me enjoying it. If anything, that freshness was part of the appeal.

I’d give it some time in the glass rather than rushing it. There’s enough happening here that it deserves to be followed over an evening, particularly as those savoury elements begin to sit alongside the fruit.

Final Thoughts

This is exactly the sort of bottle I want Through the Terroir to document.

Not because it blew me away and earned some enormous score, but because I learnt something from drinking it.

I went into the bottle expecting power and came away appreciating elegance. I expected something closer to the weight of a Bordeaux blend and found myself thinking about Pinot Noir.

Most importantly, once I’d stopped trying to make the wine fit what I thought Brunello should be, I could appreciate it for what was actually in the glass.

And what was in the glass was bloody lovely.