A solid Brunello with pretty berries, chocolate and cedar character. Full body, firm tannins and a chewy finish. Rich and powerful. Made from biodynamically grown grapes. This is a wine that needs another two or three years of bottle age to soften.

I love the way the deep, dusty nose opens up as this areates, revealing very ripe fruits, and just a hint of dried fruits. The licorice and dried flowers follow. The huge dry tannins enable this concentrated and elegant wine to easily carry all the power and push the finish out a really long way. Drink or hold.

"Here is a Brunello with so much refinement and class combining cherry, tea and tobacco character. Full and so very polished. The length and intensity is fabulous. Incredibly powerful tannins that remain refined. Give it three or four years. Better after 2018 but fabulous now".

 The beauty and balance of this Brunello is wonderful, offering blueberry, black-cherry and violet character. It’s full-bodied, yet so layered and refined with and ultra fine palate of silky tannins. A joy to taste. From organically grown grapes. One both to drink and for the cellar.

The purity and polish here shows wonderfully the moment you stick your nose in the glass, with complex aromas of plums, berries, cedar and violets. It’s full-bodied and ever so refined with elegant and intense tannins that take you deep into the wine. This is a thoughtful and finely crafted Brunello that needs time to show you its greatness. From organically grown grapes. Try after 2024.

 Aromas of sandalwood and strawberries, follow through to a full body, with chewy tannins and a long finish. Intense fruit. Better in 2014. From biodynamic grapes.

 It exhibits all the perfumed liquorice, curry and wild scrub nuances that a walk through the vineyard offers. It's dark fruited on the palate, where shaded woodland notes come to the fore and elegant, terracotta-like tannins give assertive mid-palate presence and structure. Then after all of that depth, the wine finishes with brightness and lightness. A gratifying ride that will gain even greater precision with time.

Deep maturing ruby with the beginning of orange. Fine, profound iron and cherry finely spiced, with a peppery edge. Not open by far, and none of the rich characteristics of the 2007 vintage. Fine acidity turning up on the finish, with a hit of dry, bitter tannins on the finish. Well-formed concentration. Great effort, but not ready yet. (WS)

Sour cherries, licorice, lemon verbena and balsamic on the nose. There’s lavender and sandalwood, too. So much pure sangiovese character with tangy acidity and juicy sour and savory hints carrying this wine long. Firm, grippy tannins that are at the forefront for now. Give it a few years.

Very dark ruby with narrow, bricky rim. Quite closed on the nose with just noticeable sweet cherry touches and a little lift. Massive, monolithic cherry fruit on the palate with tangy acidity creeping up on the finish. Bags of gravelly tannins that need the polish of time. Lots of potential, but still embryonic. (WS)

Deep ruby with orange tinges. Lifted cherry nose and a fragrant cherry and raspberry palate of almost cool-climate character. Firm tannins framing medium-bodied cool fruit. Long and focused, while the big tannins demand much more time.

Dense, sweet, extremely concentrated fragrance with balsamic top notes and fine wood. Great abundance and rich structure in mouth, extremely wide, generous, and with monumental intensity. Enormous finish, ever juicy, with a gigantic fully ripe tannin yield, eternally long.

Deep ruby red in colour. Black fruits and berries abound under a fragrant canopy of violet florals. Juicy. Exceptionally elegant with soft finesse. Utterly beguiling. Balanced with sheer appeal. Mid palate has depth of clarity and precision.

Medium ruby red in colour. Lifted elegance on the nose with red rose petal, violet and broom aromatics. Red cherry, wild strawberry, plum, pomegranate, feverfew and a hint of pipe tobacco.
Difficult to pull away from this exquisite bouquet. Secondary nuances of ginger and clove. Showing ripeness, structure and flavour vary. Hint of a citrusy shadow on the close.

Mid to deep lustrous ruby. Deep, complex savoury and earthy cherry with saline hints. Intense, ripe cherry fruit palate with perfectly integrated acidity and bags of gravelly, chewy tannins. Generous and intense and not ready by far. (WS)

The beauty and balance of this Brunello is wonderful,offering blueberry and violet character. It’s full-bodied, yet so layered and refined with an ultra-fine palate  of silky tannins. A joy to taste. From organically grown grapes. One both to drink and to cellar.

The San Polino 2015 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (a 6,000-bottle release made with organic fruit) is another pretty protagonist from the vintage that does not hold back in terms of intensity, primary fruit character and dark plummy ripeness. Keeping in line with the characteristics of this warm and sunny vintage, this is a generous, soft and fruit-forward expression. Those 2015 tannins are a bit softer compared to 2016, and this wine is almost, but not quite, ready to drink straight out of the gate. For best results, however, give it another three years.

I remember San Polino as one of the first organic estates in Montalcino and am happy to see that it is still active in ongoing sustainability efforts. They are involved with the International Winemakers for Climate Action (IWCA) group and started their own "Entangled Wines" project, in collaboration with university researchers, to better understand the complex ecology of a vineyard, down to the microbes.

San Polino’s Riserva was crafted from ‘one particular boat-rocker of a vat,’ according to proprietor, Katia Nussbaum. While she could have made 4,000 bottles, she blended most of it into the Helichrysum selection, keeping just 1,000 litres for this Riserva. It's a heady mix of cinnamon, allspice, vanilla and dried fennel. The palate is plentiful, with cherry compote, sweet herbs and a chalky structure. A slight dryness of tannins is countered by the sweet, ripe core and voluminous fruit. Perhaps not perfectly balanced, but crammed with boisterous, cheerful character.

San Polino's isolated vineyards sit at 400-450 metres above sea level, farmed according to permaculture, biodynamic and organic practices. Fermented with wild yeasts, and with minimal SO2 additions, the Riserva spends a short period in French barriques, although ageing is mainly in old Slavonian oak casks. Revealing subtle wafts of grilled herb and coffee, with blackberry and blackcurrant buried underneath, this is still closed, driven primarily by its minerality and intensely structured tannins. It definitely needs time.