Obsessive care in the choice of Sangiovese grapes: here is how the 2021 harvest is giving us small absolute excellences of Brunello apt for very long ageing
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by Donatella Cinelli Colombini
For years, vinifying a “single vineyard” has been a happy memory. The search for quality in grapes has become so maniacal that the harvest has become a patchwork that brings together small quantities of clusters of the same variety but with similar or completely opposite characteristics to balance each other.
<<Take the grapes from this corner, put them together with those from the vines from the central area of the vineyard next door and then move three parcels further on to take the rest to be vinified in the same vat>>. Barbara Magnani, the senior oenologist of my cellars, has the map of the harvest plan in her mobile phone so as not to miss the complicated collage.
HARVEST 2021- THE PATCHWORK HARVEST
They are all Sangiovese grapes from our vineyards. The new thing, compared to the past, is that they come from different areas and even from different sides of the espalier. The harvest has become similar to a treasure hunt where you use your mouth to select the grapes and the scales to weigh them in order to fill the vat in a single day exactly with the most homogeneous grapes.
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In the end we realized that winemaking vats over 100 hl no longer serve us and we will have to sell them to fill the fermentation hall with many small containers with a capacities of 20, 30, 50 hl but not larger. Visually it will be like the “house of the seven dwarfs” with many pot-bellied dwarfs. Something very different from the beautiful fermentation rooms in the past, with containers all the same size.
The “collage harvest” is very slow and very accurate <<to pick the grapes in this way it takes twice as long>> grumbles the head of the vineyards Efisio Luche struggling with the lack of staff that characterizes 2021.
BRUNELLO 2021 HARVEST
<<So you tell me that from June to now there have been only two rainfalls for a total of 31 mm of water I believe it, but the vineyard does not seem to have suffered thirst, because it is very well>> said our oenologist consultant Valérie Lavigne arriving on September 21 in the vineyards at Casato Prime Donne in Montalcino and ordering us to suspend the harvest of the Brunello grapes for a week. According to her, the quality of the 2021 grapes is higher than that of previous years and this has given us enthusiasm once again.
In Montalcino we are generally the first to pick while this year we will be the last. A choice that depends on the distance of about 20 days between the budding of the first buds and that of the last caused by a cold spell. The frost at the beginning of April is the main reason for the only major problem with the 2021 harvest: the scarcity of grapes. The secondary reason is the dry climate that has led to small bunches and berries. In the end there are few bunches and they have little juice so the yield in wine is below average.
In the grapes there is a beautiful high acidity almost all tartaric and this will give us very vertical and structured wines to the delight of lovers of Brunello for long aging. In fact, when the ripening phase lengthens in a period with cold nights, as has happened this year, we have Brunello of extraordinary aromatic richness and able to defy time. During the harvest the daytime temperature was close to 29 ° C, while at night it fell by 15°C.
