Cortonesi - Brunello di Montalcino La Mannella Riserva 20121

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The Cortonesi 2019 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva La Mannella delivers savory spice and toast with lots of extra oak that adds to a feeling of weight and concentration. Like many wines from this vintage, you'll notice a bigger and more concentrated fruit profile. In the case of this wine, you really do taste that extra year of aging (totaling 48 months in oak), with lingering smoke and savory tones. You also get cooked cherry and baked plum, and there is a fragrant hint of red rose on the finish. This is a 6,326-bottle release.

Tommaso Cortonesi and his team have been working hard to maintain freshness in the wines and have made some minor tweaks to farming and winemaking in order to achieve this goal. For example, they have been super careful about timing harvest dates to optimal ripeness (both in terms of sugars and phenolics) with an eye to preserving acidity. These are the challenges all vintners face with the realities of climate change.

Ian D'Agata Wine Review

Wine Spectator

Raffaele Vecchione - WinesCritic.com

Spacious in its clear and captivating sensorial profile, it shows mixed floral and fruity notes reminiscent of notes of ginger, red plums, wild strawberries, chopped cedar, mandarin peel, camphor, lemon flowers, lemon peel, ginseng root, pepper white, rosemary, marjoram and wild thyme. In the background, flint and gunpowder describe the secondary scene of great personality. Medium-full body, perfectly silky and elegant tannins and a finish of splendid gracefulness and persistence. Better from 2027.