DONATELLA CINELLI COLOMBINI AND DOCTOR WINE DANIELE CERNILLI
92/100 TO BRUNELLO PRIME DONNE IN THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE WINES OF ITALY BY DANIELE CERNILLI DOCTOR WINE,WITH ALSO A STAR FOR DONATELLA’S WINERIES
DanieleCernilli DonatellaCinelliColombini ONAV Congress 2013
By Donatella Cinelli Colombini, #winedestination
I have known Doctor Wine-Daniele Cernilli for almost forty years, when he was a young philosophy professor with a passion for tasting wine and the mission of raising the quality of Italian wineries by forcing them to compare themselves with each other and with the rest of the world.
We respect each other and are fond of each other. I cannot forget his words of comfort after the death of my husband Carlo.However, our sensitivities for wine diverge: Cernilli prefers leading wine makers like Carlo Ferrini, I believe in nature as the absolute protagonist. A distinction that leads to different outcomes especially in style. In fact, those who, like me, pick the grapes before over- ripeness softens the skin, produce more elegant but less powerful wines than those who wait. But I am convinced that this choice maintains a greater imprint of the terroir and the vintage in the wine. I intend to continue along this path: less power and more territoriality because the wine must tell and surprise and not always be the same.
I am grateful to Daniele Cernilli for having included my winery in the Essential Guide of Italian Wines 2025, also assigning it a star. It’s a joy and an honour.
THE DESCRIPTION OF BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO PRIME DONNE 2019 BY DOCTOR WINE
Daniele Cernilli’s description of the Brunello Prime Donne 2019 highlights the freshness and longevity of this wine as well as its splendid persistence.
<<Classic nose between undergrowth and shy red fruity notes. Intense texture with lively tannins that slightly slow down the progression in the centre. The finish is tasty and vigorous. A young and promising wine>>
ARE WE AT THE END OF AN ERA IN WINE?
I use this post to focus on the daily Doctor Wine newsletter in which Daniele Cernilli offers us food for thought as a philosopher and intellectual. Ideas that open the mind like the one from September 4th entitled <<Are we at the end of an era?>>
It starts from the words of Amilio Petron which invite optimism: wine will make it even if there are two transitions at the same time, one climatic and the other economic. Then Cernilli notes how a positive cycle that began with the methanol tragedy and was initially marked by a growth towards success that also involved the Gambero Rosso and Arcigola wine guide, then Slow Food, is coming to an end. An impulse that has slowly been pulverized into many initiatives that the market is now struggling to sustain
Even wine, once linked to territories and denominations, is now joined by the <world of “natural” wines, dealcoholized ones, even wine-based cocktails, such as spritzes>>.
Finally, there are young consumers who turn their backs on wine. There are many reasons << health, environmental, certainly. Also, a somewhat repulsive way that some of the communication of wine, through jargon or hyper-technical languages, has had in recent years>>.
Basically the answer to this change, for Daniele Cernilli, is culture. I agree with him. Putting people and territories back at the centre and talking about them. <<An old recipe, perhaps, but to be created with new tools, so as to bring as many people as possible closer and fall in love again with a world that is also made of passion and not just polyphenols or indigenous yeasts>>