2016 Talenti Piero Brunello di Montalcino 750 ml

Topping the charts in any Brunello vintage is no small feat—and doing it in 2016, Wine Advocate’s highest-scoring vintage of all time, is a MASSIVE achievement. In that picture-perfect year, the top is exactly where Talenti’s Piero Brunello di Montalcino landed.

This is Brunello at its deep, complex, majestic finest. Wine Spectator honored it with a 98-point score that matches the best they gave any 2016 Brunello. Antonio Galloni of Vinous couldn’t help musing about the wine’s elegant texture—“pure elegance, like silk being draped across the senses yet perfectly balanced by zesty acids”—in his glowing review.

The Talenti story begins with Pierluigi “Piero” Talenti, for whom this special release is named—among “the most famous figures in the world of Montalcino oenology,” said Robert Parker. He was hired by the illustrious Brunello producer Il Poggio before going on to become “one of the leading winemakers in Italy of his age,” according to Galloni.

While helping craft Il Poggio’s timeless legacy, Piero found an estate after his own heart: some 98 acres just south of Montalcino in the valley of the Orcia River, a remote, rolling place wooded with holm oaks and orchards. In the 1970s, he planted the vines in the tiny vineyard that provides the grapes for this wine—100% Sangiovese, showing his traditionalist streak.

Situated on a slope with a southeasterly exposure, the low-yielding old vines are rooted in galestro soil at 1345 feet of elevation, and they yield Sangiovese of profound nuance. In 2016’s temperate, dry growing season, Piero’s son Riccardo, Talenti’s current winemaker, coaxed fantastic concentration and a stunning aromatic bouquet from grapes that still maintain a bright streak of acidity.