Today I'll go over the first half of our Tuscany tastings from Vinitaly. We spent nearly two full days of the five within the Tuscany pavilion (Pad 8) and the majority of that time wandering through the area that housed the members of the Consorzio di Brunello di Montalcino. Most everyone there was offering their 2006 Rosso di Montalcino and 2003 Brunello for tasting, with a few other outliers. We did manage to get a few tastes from wineries other than Brunello producers, but not many. These notes are all from our first day of Tuscany tastings.
We wasted no time on Friday getting to the top flight producers, as our first stop was Siro Pacenti. As would become the pattern, we first tasted the 2006 Rosso, followed by the 2003 Brunello. Our host turned out to be none other than the winemaker himself, Giancarlo Pacenti (kudos for my Dad for figuring out it was him too!). No doubt, these wines were very good, and were my first hint that the 2003 vintage may be better than a lot of "experts" have thought. The extreme heat that did produce some stress was apparently dealt with fairly effectively my many of the top producers, especially those who have vineyards in spots that are traditionally a bit cooler.
Following Pacenti, our next two stops were Lisini and Fanti. Lisini offered the standard two wines, while at Fanti, we also tasted the 2006 Rosso Sant'Antimo. Honestly, I can't remember a lot about these wines, other than they were very good but not good enough to stand out from the crowd. I'm not knocking them at all, I just really don't recall much. I've had the 2005 Sant'Antimo from Fanti here at home and have another bottle at home currently, so there will be a tasting note on that soon.
From Fanti, we next stopped at Terralsole, a winery I was actually quite familiar with, having had their Brunello and Rosso previously (the Rosso as recently as two weeks before). We ended up with quite a treat here, as the owner Mario saw us standing behind some other tasters and invited us to sit down with him. He proceeded to discuss everything we'd want to know about his wines, and bring out quite a lineup of wines. After starting with the usual (06 Rosso and 03 Brunello), we then tried the 2002 Brunello, which shocked us with how good it was for the vintage. Mario explained that in their location, they were actually almost finished with their harvest in 02 when the rains hit (02 was basically a washout vintage in most of Tuscany) so they were able to produce a very good wine. We then finished the Brunello portion with the 2000 vintage, which is still on the young side, but starting to come into its own.
Mario then introduced us to Terralsole's new IGT wines, with three wines from the 2005 vintage. The Coldoro is 100% Merlot, the Solisto is 100% Syrah, and the Pasticcio is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Sangiovese. All were very enjoyable and will be interesting to search out here in the US. Mario's enthusiasm made this one of the highlight tastings of the trip, and certainly left an impression on us. Terralsole will definitely be a winery I continue to seek out.
This actually only completes a part of Friday's Tuscany tastings, but I'll split this post here before continuing with more Vinitaly recaps later.
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