2012 La Rasina Brunello di Montalcino 750 ml

96-Point Showstopping #9 Brunello of the Vintage

The “wonderfully precise” 2012 La Rasina Brunello di Montalcino earned a well-deserved 96 points from Italian wine expert James Suckling. The critic then installed this wine at number nine on his Top 25 Brunello list alongside big names that push the triple-digit price point. “2012 is not a vintage to miss,” Suckling wrote, with much “in common with the legendary 2010 vintage,” Brunello’s highest-scoring season in two decades. Suckling has company in raving about 2012’s exceptional elegance: Jancis Robinson calls 2012 a year of “majesty without mass,” and Wine Enthusiast hails Brunello’s 2012 “return to finesse.” Aged for 24 months in traditional 20- and 40-hectoliter oak barrels, the La Rasina is “pliant and generous, with a plush middle,” and boasts the gorgeous cherry and floral character that makes Brunello one of a kind. At $39.99 per bottle — 33% off the release price — this is ready for enjoyment now after a good long decant, and will evolve beautifully for another decade.

Brunello di Montalcino has reclaimed its unique character — and then some. Brunello, one of the most regal DOCGs in Italy, was not immune to the effects of California’s commercial wine boom of the 1990s, and saw some of its producers driven to compete in a market with a New World sensibilities by emulating dark and jammy California Cabernets.

Those days are gone, and the classic Brunello style — vibrant and floral — is on display in Marco Mantengoli’s over-delivering 96-point La Rasina, from vines planted more than two decades ago on the family’s 111-acre estate. Marco is unafraid of embracing the technology that will yield the best wine, and achieves Brunello’s trademark agility and elegance with a short 10-day fermentation of destemmed grapes in precisely controlled stainless steel tanks. Then he enhances the wine’s body through lees stirring, before it rests in large oak casks. In the stellar 2012 vintage, the result is nothing short of classic.