Brunello di Montalcino 2012 Riserva Diecianni DOCG Le Chiuse
Brunello di Montalcino Riserva: what is it and what does it mean? What differentiates it from Brunello di Montalcino besides the price? At Le Chiuse, Riserva has always been made, ever since the days of Tancredi Biondi-Santi, my maternal great-grandfather, starting from the search for a wine that would last over time, almost eternal. My mother Simonetta, after inheriting Le Chiuse, with the help of my father Nicolò, began to add to the production of Rosso and Brunello di Montalcino that of Riserva, starting in 1995. To make the Riserva they used the smallest bunches from the oldest vineyard in order to make a wine with character and personality that would last over time.
"I grew up in the wine business tasting and having Le Chiuse tasted around the world" - one of the most frequent comments about the Riserva was precisely the flaw of having opened it too early, at a time when the wine could not express its best. At the same time, I observed how much people were struggling to give a specific identity to Brunello Riserva, distinguishing it from Brunello "vintage," except for the difference in price. The most obvious choices, i.e., the provenance of grapes from single vineyard or the use of a particular winemaking style, would not have made sense in our case, since the vineyards registered for Brunello are all in the same "micro-area" that constitutes a sort of single vineyard, while as far as winemaking style is concerned, I could never have distorted our philosophy of making wine, viscerally connected to tradition, by resorting to a more modern approach.
The only possible solution was therefore the simplest and most natural one: to give time to a wine that was asking for time. This is how, based on the experiences of past Reserves, we decided to postpone the release of our Riserva from the sixth to the tenth year after the harvest, extending the aging in the bottle from one to almost five years. To do this, it was necessary to make an extension of the cellar by going down seven meters below ground level, giving the bottles the ideal environment for their aging. This allowed us to obtain a Reserve of greater balance and complexity without, however, affecting our idea of wine and the expressiveness of our soil. The step that is usually found between the Rosso and the Brunello is now also found between the Brunello and the Brunello Riserva, giving rise to three voices quite distinct from each other but still belonging to the same choir. And so it is that with the 2010 vintage our Brunello di Montalcino Riserva DIECIANNI was born.
