find this wine – about 20 euros in Italy and Germany, £25 in the UK
I’m very sorry that my first wine of the week to follow the suggestion of purple pager Danny Jurmann, a self-confessed ‘skinflint’, that I publish the price prominently is so expensive but, believe me, I have chosen it only because it really is very special indeed - better than many a Brunello di Montalcino. This new producer’s wines haves yet to cross the Atlantic as far as I can tell and, if experience is anything to go by, we can expect prices to rise once they do, but this is surely a rising star of the Montalcino zone.
Stella di Campalto runs the six-hectare/15-acre estate at Castelnuovo dell’Abate. It was completely replanted in 1992, went organic in 1996 and biodynamic in 2002. The estate is made up of very varied soil types including galestro, ferrous, clay and volcanic. All of these parcels are harvested and vinified separately in a combination of large (38 hl) Austrian oak botte and small French barrels. This wine could quite legitimately have been sold as a Brunello di Montalcino but Stella di Campalto has quite rightly declassified the entire production from this heatwave vintage to Rosso di Montalcino and will not therefore release her debut Brunello di Montalcino, the 2004, until 2009.
I look forward very much to tasting her Brunello as this Rosso di Montalcino, already quite developed and ready to drink, is wonderfully correct – really expressive of grape and place, but with great grace and delicacy. In view of concerns voiced in my last Montalcino report, on Brunello di Montalcino 2001s, it was the purity of flavour that particularly excited me. (Nothing to with the sex of the winemaker nor the biodynamic bit, obviously.)
The Slow Food/Gambero Rosso annual guide Italian Wines is equally besotted, calling this ‘the best Rosso di Montalcino to appear in our tastings’ adding ‘This estate repeated last year’s stunning debut performance’. David Berry-Green of Berry Bros apparently virtually stumbled across this producer on a visit to Tuscany and it is surely only a matter of time before she is more widely known.
Berry Bros (www.bbr.com) are therefore selling it at £24.95 per single bottle (£22.45 if an unmixed case is ordered) although you can get it much more cheaply in Italy and Germany.
Be careful however. There is another bottling of 2003 Rosso di Montalcino called Buontempo which I have not tasted but is apparently slightly cheaper and simpler.
San Giuseppe, Loc Castelnuovo dell'Abate, Podere San Giuseppe 35, 53020 Montalcino tel +39 0577 835 754
San Giuseppe, Loc Castelnuovo dell'Abate, Podere San Giuseppe 35, 53020 Montalcino tel +39 0577 835 754