2014 Il Marroneto Brunello di Montalcino Tuscany 750 ml

We’re proud to announce that we’ve scored the 2014 Il Marroneto, a bottle whose purity and age-worthiness not only sum up what Il Marroneto is all about, but earned it 95-point Cellar Selection honors from Wine Enthusiast. Those accolades put it at the VERY top of the magazine’s 2014 Brunello ratings, where bottles regularly command $100 or more. 

Top-scoring, cellar-worthy, universally renowned Brunello rarely gets better than this—especially with nearly seven years of cellar aging done for you.  

“Radiant,” “alluring and ethereally elegant” in the words of Wine Enthusiast’s chart-topping review, this is a bottle that sums up our obsession. You’d be hard-pressed to do better for iconic Brunello. A small-production wine you’d normally find on restaurant lists at about $200, we recommend claiming as much as you can and enjoying its evolution over the next decade. 

We’ve been angling for the iconic Il Marroneto Brunello for years. To understand why, look no further than this quote from Ian D’Agata of Vinous: “Over the last ten years especially (i.e., the wines of the 21st century), with the increasing age of its vines, Il Marroneto has been the source of some of the purest, most perfumed and most archetypal renditions of Sangiovese made anywhere.”

Garnet with a brick-red rim, the 2014 opens to reveal a heady mix of dried Morello cherries, raspberry preserves, black cherry, dried violets, crushed stones, sandalwood, and a hint of mocha. With flavors of blackberry and fresh cherry singing through notes of cedar, earth, and sumac, the palate thrills in the tension between gripping tannins and vibrant acid balance. It’s a nuanced Brunello that shows its classic structure through the power of restraint.

Founded in 1974, Il Marroneto is located in the north of the appellation, where the wines are characterized by elegance, aromatics, complexity, and freshness. They farm only 14 acres on one of the older estates in Montalcino—the name derives from a 13th-century building that the nuns of the Madonna delle Grazie convent once used to dry chestnuts to make flour. 

Giuseppe Mori, an attorney in Siena, founded the estate as a lark. His sons Andrea and Alessandro followed in his footsteps professionally, but also showed a great interest in winemaking. And after they made their first vintage in 1980, Andrea went back to lawyering—but Alessandro had found his calling in the cellar. 

He completed the plantings in 1982-83, finishing with 14 acres sitting in an intricate mix of sand, limestone, and Tuscany’s legendary galestro soil, just outside of the village of Montalcino. The vines are generously spaced—each has 3.6 square meters to itself—which gives each plant plenty of room to establish deep root networks. Mori then raises the grapes with minimal intervention, avoiding intensive production, and harvesting when the stalk takes on burnt color tones—something that indicates that the grape seeds have reached maturity. 

In the cellar, Mori follows ultra-traditional methods, aging the wine in massive wooden botti that hail from France’s Allier forest, and from the northern Croatian region of Slavonia. The result is a Brunello that is held in the highest regard for its grace and ageability. We’re thrilled to have scored this deal, and to deliver it at long last to Wine Access members!