Brunello Di Montalcino

Serve La Torre Brunello with roasted red meats, game, and ripe cheeses. Also a superb after-dinner “meditation wine”.

The La Torre winery was founded in 1976 by Giuseppe Ananìa who purchased the La Torre estate from the Ciacci family of Montalcino. Until a few years earlier the estate had been worked as a farm by sharecroppers with livestock cherry trees wheat and mixed olive trees and vines. While Giuseppe planted the first vineyard two and a half hectares in area in 1976 it was up to his son Luigi to expand it in 1999 by another three hectares. Now the vineyard totals about five and a half hectares and surrounds the house on the south and west.

The terrain is harsh and stony and located on a hillside at 430 metres a.s.l. near Sant'Angelo in Colle. The south and west-facing vineyards are on Eocene terrain with a base of pietraserena, galestro and limestone. The vineyards have an extension of 5,6 hectares and are divided into four square areas, each harvested separately at the end of September. Vine density is 3,900 plants/ha. on spur cordon. The yield is approximately 6 tons/ha.

La Torre Brunello di Montalcino is aged for 42 months in 3,900 litres Slavonian oak casks; only a part, about 17%, spends a 12-month period in 250 litres French barriques. The wine is finally allowed to rest in the bottle before being released. During the first year the wine is racked three times, in December, March and September. In subsequent years it is racked once, in March.

After being harvested by hand, the grapes are taken to the cellar, where fermentation and maceration last for approximately 20 days.