Casanova di Neri - Brunello di Montalcino 2020

Decanter Magazine

Honouring owner Giacomo Neri’s father, the seven-hectare Giovanni Neri site is just two kilometres east of Tenuta Nuova, in the area of Sesta. It sees about 15% whole-bunch fruit, which helps to curb alcohol levels. Intense dark cherry is suffused with carob, mace and toasty wood. Weighty and chock full of dense creamy black fruit elaborately swaddled by velvety tannins, it cinches in at the right moment, while luscious acidity illuminates the whole.

Jeb Dunnuck

A deep red/brick color, the 2020 Brunello Di Montalcino is ripe with notes of black cherries, tea leaves, dark, sappy herbs, and forest floor. Full-bodied, it's ripe and inviting, with a velvety texture and a great warming finish, and while it's a ripe wine, it carries it with a weightless feel and does not feel heavy-handed. It should continue to drink well over the next 10-12 years.

James Suckling

Really delicious fruit with cherry and berry character, as well as a hint of cedar. Creamy tannins and fresh acidity. Grapes from the Cerretalto vineyard are used here this year. Drink or hold.

The Wine Independent

Raffaele Vecchione - WinesCritic.com

Intense on the nose, reminiscent of dark aromas such as black blueberries, black plums, ripe dates. In the background, spices such as black pepper, juniper berries, wild mint but also cinchona and rhubarb. On the palate, full body, firm tannins and a truly tense and pronounced finish. Better from 2027.

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The Casanova di Neri 2020 Brunello di Montalcino (with the white label) represents a departure from the norm. Because the Cerretalto was not produced, fruit from that vineyard with its reddish mineral-rich soils was directed here instead. For that reason, this wine is especially spicy, lifted and intense. Dark cherry fruit is followed by rusty nail, black pepper and milled spice. The wine is fermented in steel tanks, sees 20 days of skin maceration and ages in botte and tonneaux for over three years. The oak is very well integrated. This is a wine of character (with 98,000 bottles made).

In 2020, the Neri family did not make its flagship wine, Brunello di Montalcino Cerretalto. Grapes for that wine were directed to the white-label 2020 Brunello di Montalcino instead. It's been exciting to watch an evolution of style underway at this winery that comes with a new generation now fully involved in the cellar. Giacomo Neri's winemaking style focused on more concentration with pump-overs and punch-downs, but sons Giovanni and Gianlorenzo have tweaked the house style to focus on less extraction and more fruit balance instead. They are experimenting with softer cap management, bigger woods and some whole-cluster fermentation (used partially in the Brunello di Montalcino Giovanni Neri, for example). These are very exciting times for the Casanova di Neri brand.