1999 – a great vintage for Brunello

It is always illuminating to meet readers of this column. The other night I was told very firmly by a London stockbroker in his thirties that absolutely the only wine worth drinking was top quality red bordeaux.

I am well aware that a certain proportion of British wine connoisseurs believe this and that an even bigger proportion of them still view Italian wine as being beyond the pale.

My objective this week is to convince the doubters among fine wine enthusiasts that they currently have a unique opportunity to face and conquer their prejudice: Brunello di Montalcino 1999.

American and German-speakers, as well as Italians themselves of course, have long revered Tuscany's grandest wine. Indeed they have been such enthusiasts for it that very little ever made its way to⁞ the UK. The Swiss and Germans would zoom down to load up their BMWs and Mercedes with cases of each new vintage, and what was left would be shipped straight across the Atlantic to the powerful Italo-American distribution network.

But the situation is very different at this precise moment. The German economic malaise has dramatically reduced demand for all fine Italian wines north of the Alps. Cellars in Piedmont are awash with Barolo and Barbaresco seeking any careful owner, and the sprawl of new vineyards in Tuscany is causing real concern to established producers there who wonder who on earth is going to buy all this wine.

The Americans meanwhile, who have long been Italy's most important importers of her wines, are struggling with a decidedly disobliging exchange rate and, although the market is by no means dead, it is definitely moribund.

Cue British wine lovers. This is the serious sterling-financed wine collector's chance to buy in to the Tuscan one of Italy's three great vinous Bs, at a time when prices are stable.

But much, much more important that this arid economic argument is that the Brunello di Montalcino vintage that has just been released according to the prevailing five-year rule is the best I have ever tasted. The previous vintage, the 1998s, were pretty chunky and dry, not to say burnt in some cases. The best vintages of the last decade, the 1993s and the super-ripe 1997s are supposed to have been pretty good but I must confess they left me a little cold. Same old story as with so many 'great' wines. Admirable, yes, but not desperately enjoyable with their extremely solid, not to say obdurate, tannins.

But the best 1999s (and there are hearteningly many of them) seem to my palate to have quite a different structure. For one thing they are extremely ripe, fruity and beguiling – without being ridiculously, uncomfortably potent; most are 13 or 13.5 per cent alcohol. Thanks to a combination of sunshine but no drought and therefore nice, steady ripening, the harvest was much earlier than usual, but the phenolics ripened fully as the sugars rose (unlike the example of many 2003s mentioned last week). So although many of the wines are already deliciously ready to drink, the best should have the structure to see them through many, many more years as they become even more subtle and while we wait for the 1999 Brunello di Montalcino Riservas, which really much be quite something and will be released next January.

Brunello is the name given to Tuscany's dominant grape Sangiovese when grown around the hilltop town of Montalcino south east of Siena. Brunello di Montalcino as a communal activity really only jerked into life in the 1950s when there were fewer than a dozen bottlers of it. Today there are more than 200, almost three times as many as there were in 1990 – and the total vineyard area has grown to 1,700 hectares (just over 4,000 acres). Brunello has attracted considerable outside investment.

Two main phenomena, apart from sheer capital and the wherewithal to upgrade casks and other winery equipment, have been responsible for the dramatic improvement in quality here. Firstly vineyards today tend to be planted much more densely than they were, so that each individual vine is required to bear much less but more flavourful fruit. Secondly there has been a revolution in winemaking knowledge and skills.

On the whole this second development has been positive, although there are Brunellos, just as there seem to some wines in every region nowadays, which are just too ripe and overblown to be refreshing. With the invasion of oenologists has come the inevitable invasion of small French oak barrels to replace or supplement the traditional large Slavonian oak casks so charmingly known as botti. With a minimum of two and a maximum of four years' oak ageing, the wines have plenty of opportunity to experience a wide range of wooden lodging. One or two seemed to me to be so excessively influenced by French oak as to have lost their local character.

So what is this local character? Well, imagine Chianti. Then forget it, because although there is a relationship between Chianti's main grape and Brunello, the vineyards of Montalcino are so, so much warmer and drier than those of Chiantishire that the wines tend to be very much more concentrated and fuller. Yet the more open terrain of the Montalcino zone means that there is good ventilation, so healthy fruity, and relatively cool summer nights, so good acidity. I would suggest that a good Brunello is to semi-dried plums as the good red bordeaux so beloved of my stockbroker friend is to freshly picked blackcurrants. And on top of that fruit is a strong suggestion of autumn in the form of what Italians call sottobosco, the French call sousbois and we, rather less tunefully, might call mulch.

The only special offer of Brunello 1999 I have come across in the UK is at Fine & Rare Wines of London W10 (www.frw.co.uk). Expect to pay between 25 and, for the most renowned, 50 pounds a bottle for these satisfying treasures – roughly the same as for a classed growth from the very, very much less satisfactory 1999 vintage of red bordeaux.

Favourite 1999 Brunellos
Agostina Pieri
Argiano
Fanti
Fastelli
Fuligni
Il Poggiolo
Sesti
Siro Pacenti

There are detailed tasting notes and ratings on 65 Brunello 1999s on purple pages.