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Story Teller Wine Company
I can distinctly remember the buzz in the room when I attended a trade tasting of Brunellos from the 2004 vintage. This was months ago but it has been hard to forget all the back and forth hype about 2004 Brunellos. After a lot of rain in 2002 and a lot of hot days in 2003, people were declaring the 2004 vintage in Brunello to be superior to 1999 and 2001. Heck, noted Italian wine importer Dominic Nocerino went on record as saying 2004 might even surpass the legendary 1955 and 1975 vintages! I don’t have any experience with the 1955 and 1975 vintages but I do know the weather in 2004 was pretty nice for Brunello. The summer months were sunny and warm, although nothing like 2003. August provided a bit of a cool down so those sugar levels didn’t have a chance to run out of control. By the end of summer it was nice and warm, with very little rain. Other than the fact that all those Sangiovese vines produced way too many grapes after the big shut down in 2003, this had all the markings of a very nice vintage. At least for the producers who knew to drop crop several times during the year. The Brunellos I tasted that day were very good, with rich fruit, soft tannins, elevated acidity and a spicy willingness to please early on in their lives. Will the 2004 Brunellos go on to achieve “legendary” status? Who am I to say? I thought they were pretty darned good. But while lots of folks wait around 20-50 years to come to a final conclusion, I had already figured out one thing at that tasting: the “baby brothers” of those Brunellos offer some fantastic drinking for a much lower price. That’s why I spend a lot of time seeking out good Rosso di Montalcino wines from that 2004 vintage. A wine can only be called Brunello di Montalcino if it is made exclusively with Sangiovese grapes grown in and around the town of Montalcino. Beyond those two requirements, a Brunello has to be aged for a minimum of two years in oak, and one year in bottle. After all of that, the wines cannot be released until five years after harvest. Talk about a situation that puts a crimp in your cash flow! Which is why many of those same great producers of Brunello also make a wine called Rosso di Montalcino. It is made with 100% Sangiovese from around Montalcino but the wine may be released after just one year of barrel time. These rosso wines are made with grapes from younger vines and they are viewed as a “preview of coming attractions” when it comes to getting an early glimpse of the Brunello vintage. The phrase “baby Brunello” gets thrown around quite a bit when talking about Rosso di Montalcino. But some producers get a little touchy when you call their Rosso di Montalcino a “baby Brunello.” It’s a different wine they will say, one that is fresh and lively, a wine that should be evaluated on its own merits. A serious wine, deserving of scrutiny say others. Even Franco Biondi-Santi, the godfather of Brunello di Montalcino, told a reporter for the Italian daily La Nazione, “Rosso di Montalcino should not be viewed as a ‘little brother’ but rather as a ‘different twin’ of Brunello.” That statement conjured up an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in the movie Twins, but I knew what Biondi-Santi was getting at. 2004 Santa Lucia Rosso di Montalcino DOC normally 29.00 (13% alcohol) This wine is brought into the United States by a good friend of mine from Chicago, Paolo Cerruti. Paolo used to ride herd over Domino Nocerino’s Vinifera wines in the midwest, but after several years of servitude he struck out on his own. Paolo comes from a restaurant family in Alba and every time he would go home to visit, he would scour the countryside looking for quality wineries that weren’t yet represented in America. Santa Lucia is one of his best finds. “Santa Lucia” is a traditional Neapolitan song that was originally published in the mid 1800s. Since that time, this celebration of the beautiful waterfront district in the Bay of Naples has been recorded by everybody from Enrico Caruso to Elvis Presley. And while the original song is about a boatman inviting someone to take a spin on the water to enjoy the cool evening air, a lot of people associate Santa Lucia with cold, dark Scandinavian nights. I personally blame Rick Steves for keeping this association going. There’s Rick in his yearly Christmas specials, heralding the version of the song that is popular in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Turns out some crafty Scandinavian took Santa Lucia and wrote a few new lyrics so the song could be used to celebrate Saint Lucy’s winter festival of lights. So instead of a nice summer evening in Naples, you get lyrics like “the night walks with heavy steps” and “outside it’s dark and cold.” Luckily, this wine works either way. The Santa Lucia estate is located high up in the scenic hills around Siena, about a mile way from Montalcino. The property was purchased in 1990 by Valter Pierangioli and he personally watches over the management and cultivation of his seventeen acres of Sangiovese grosso. The hillside vines grow up out of the difficult calcareous clay soil that Brunello producers claim gives their wines that beautiful, mineral-laden dark fruit quality. The estate’s winemaker, Lorenzo Scotto, takes the grapes that are destined for the Rosso di Montalcino and takes just over three weeks to complete the fermentation and maceration in stainless steel tanks. And Valter is one of those estate owners who would like his Rosso di Montalcino to be be looked at as a serious wine, so he matures the juice for one full year in giant thousand gallon oak tanks and then lets the finished product rest for one more year in the bottle before releasing it to the public. Believe me, it’s worth the wait. The Santa Lucia Rosso di Montalcino has an elegant pale ruby color, with just the slightest bit of a rim developing. Aromatically there is a nice burst of dark cherry fruit along with a bit of earthiness. Somewhere all of the scents, I could make out a bit of smokiness and a dried herb note. I know certain Indian tribes like to tie up a bundle of dried sage and then light it for ceremonies and I can’t help but wonder if this wine smells like that. Or I could just have watched Thunderheart too many times. But once I was able to get a bit of this rosso in my mouth, that’s when the real fun began. If Brunellos are serious and muscular in terms of tannin, this rosso is fun and smooth. No rough tannin edges here, just some nice structure and a nice bit of juicy acidity. It’s racy and fresh, and Chianti lovers are going to like this wine a whole lot. The flavors are still in the dark fruit range, but perhaps more to the tart black raspberry side, along with a wee it of cedar. And there’s definitely some wet rock and fresh-turned earth qualities here as well. I recently poured this wine for a family friend, a friend who grew up outside of Florence. This person normally doesn’t drink wines that cost over ten or twelve bucks and I caught him muttering “troppo nizza,” so I think he liked it. I noticed he also polished off half a bottle if that is any indication. I like to look at Rosso di Montalcino as the fun side of Brunello. If Brunello Riserva is the wedding, Rosso di Montalcino is the fling. Somebody once wrote “think Brunello, drink rosso” and I can appreciate that phrase more than ever after a few bottles of the Santa Lucia. The 2004 Santa Lucia Brunello goes for about 50.00 to 60.00 a bottle, so their Rosso di Montalcino represents quite a value at half that price. Thanks to Paolo, we get this wine directly from the winery so we are able to a bit better than it’s regular retail price of just under thirty bucks a bottle. Quantities are fairly limited but if we run out, there is a new shipment arriving in Portland in about a month. So if you order this wine now, you will pay 27.00 a bottle. For 6-11 bottles the price drops to 24.00 per bottle. Or you may get a case of twelve bottles, in which case the per bottle price drops to 22.00. So if you are in need of a fine bottle of wine, one that is ready to make you happy while you wait for its burlier twin to come out of its slumber, I suggest you give this pretty, but humble, rosso a try! Friday Night Wine Tasting, Jan. 8, 6:00-9:00PM; Bye-bye Brianne! Our intrepid world traveler, not to mention assistant to the Head Storyteller and Eyrie tasting room manager, Brianne Day is headed off to South America to work the upcoming wine harvest. So it will be several months before Brianne stands behind the copper tasting bar at Storyteller Wine Company. In honor of this bon voyage I have put together a very nice tasting for Friday evening. There will be champagne from Marc Chauvet (if it was good enough for Jancis Robinson’s eldest daughter’s wedding reception, it is good enough for us), a special wine from The Eyrie Vineyards, a mystery Pinot Noir from one of the Willamette Valley’s finest winemakers, a Chenin Blanc from South Africa and a wine from one of the Rhone’s most famous producers. That Rhone wine, by the way, made the Wine Spectator’s latest Top 100 Wines but we are willing to overlook that and pour it anyway. And if you have ever been to one of our tastings, you know there is a good chance there will be a few surprise bottles on hand. Speaking of which, the “super pour” this Friday evening will be an older vintage of a superb Sauvignon Blanc that was made with fruit from vines that have spent the better part of the last six decades pushing up through clay, flint, limestone and a gazillion little marine fossils in the Loire Valley. Can you say “see-lex” ? I know you can. There will be no charge for the regular portion of this tasting. Saturday Wine Tasting, Jan. 9, 12:00-5:00PM: Pinks! We pride ourselves on being contrarians. So this Saturday we will be drinking pink and offering 20% off on every bottle of pink wine in the store, still or bubbly. There will be no charge for this tasting. Cheers and Welcome to 2010, Michael Alberty Head Storyteller Visit www.StorytellerWine.com >> 5511-B SW Hood Ave, Portland \| (503) 206-7029 \| 1.800.753.2531

Story Teller Wine Company

I can distinctly remember the buzz in the room when I attended a trade tasting of Brunellos from the 2004 vintage. This was months ago but it has been hard to forget all the back and forth hype about 2004 Brunellos. After a lot of rain in 2002 and a lot of hot days in 2003, people were declaring the 2004 vintage in Brunello to be superior to 1999 and 2001. Heck, noted Italian wine importer Dominic Nocerino went on record as saying 2004 might even surpass the legendary 1955 and 1975 vintages!

I don’t have any experience with the 1955 and 1975 vintages but I do know the weather in 2004 was pretty nice for Brunello. The summer months were sunny and warm, although nothing like 2003. August provided a bit of a cool down so those sugar levels didn’t have a chance to run out of control. By the end of summer it was nice and warm, with very little rain. Other than the fact that all those Sangiovese vines produced way too many grapes after the big shut down in 2003, this had all the markings of a very nice vintage. At least for the producers who knew to drop crop several times during the year. The Brunellos I tasted that day were very good, with rich fruit, soft tannins, elevated acidity and a spicy willingness to please early on in their lives.

Will the 2004 Brunellos go on to achieve “legendary” status? Who am I to say? I thought they were pretty darned good. But while lots of folks wait around 20-50 years to come to a final conclusion, I had already figured out one thing at that tasting: the “baby brothers” of those Brunellos offer some fantastic drinking for a much lower price. That’s why I spend a lot of time seeking out good Rosso di Montalcino wines from that 2004 vintage.

A wine can only be called Brunello di Montalcino if it is made exclusively with Sangiovese grapes grown in and around the town of Montalcino. Beyond those two requirements, a Brunello has to be aged for a minimum of two years in oak, and one year in bottle. After all of that, the wines cannot be released until five years after harvest. Talk about a situation that puts a crimp in your cash flow! Which is why many of those same great producers of Brunello also make a wine called Rosso di Montalcino. It is made with 100% Sangiovese from around Montalcino but the wine may be released after just one year of barrel time. These rosso wines are made with grapes from younger vines and they are viewed as a “preview of coming attractions” when it comes to getting an early glimpse of the Brunello vintage. The phrase “baby Brunello” gets thrown around quite a bit when talking about Rosso di Montalcino.

But some producers get a little touchy when you call their Rosso di Montalcino a “baby Brunello.” It’s a different wine they will say, one that is fresh and lively, a wine that should be evaluated on its own merits. A serious wine, deserving of scrutiny say others. Even Franco Biondi-Santi, the godfather of Brunello di Montalcino, told a reporter for the Italian daily La Nazione, “Rosso di Montalcino should not be viewed as a ‘little brother’ but rather as a ‘different twin’ of Brunello.” That statement conjured up an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in the movie Twins, but I knew what Biondi-Santi was getting at.

2004 Santa Lucia Rosso di Montalcino DOC
normally 29.00 (13% alcohol)

This wine is brought into the United States by a good friend of mine from Chicago, Paolo Cerruti. Paolo used to ride herd over Domino Nocerino’s Vinifera wines in the midwest, but after several years of servitude he struck out on his own. Paolo comes from a restaurant family in Alba and every time he would go home to visit, he would scour the countryside looking for quality wineries that weren’t yet represented in America. Santa Lucia is one of his best finds.

“Santa Lucia” is a traditional Neapolitan song that was originally published in the mid 1800s. Since that time, this celebration of the beautiful waterfront district in the Bay of Naples has been recorded by everybody from Enrico Caruso to Elvis Presley. And while the original song is about a boatman inviting someone to take a spin on the water to enjoy the cool evening air, a lot of people associate Santa Lucia with cold, dark Scandinavian nights. I personally blame Rick Steves for keeping this association going. There’s Rick in his yearly Christmas specials, heralding the version of the song that is popular in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Turns out some crafty Scandinavian took Santa Lucia and wrote a few new lyrics so the song could be used to celebrate Saint Lucy’s winter festival of lights. So instead of a nice summer evening in Naples, you get lyrics like “the night walks with heavy steps” and “outside it’s dark and cold.” Luckily, this wine works either way.

The Santa Lucia estate is located high up in the scenic hills around Siena, about a mile way from Montalcino. The property was purchased in 1990 by Valter Pierangioli and he personally watches over the management and cultivation of his seventeen acres of Sangiovese grosso. The hillside vines grow up out of the difficult calcareous clay soil that Brunello producers claim gives their wines that beautiful, mineral-laden dark fruit quality. The estate’s winemaker, Lorenzo Scotto, takes the grapes that are destined for the Rosso di Montalcino and takes just over three weeks to complete the fermentation and maceration in stainless steel tanks. And Valter is one of those estate owners who would like his Rosso di Montalcino to be be looked at as a serious wine, so he matures the juice for one full year in giant thousand gallon oak tanks and then lets the finished product rest for one more year in the bottle before releasing it to the public. Believe me, it’s worth the wait.

The Santa Lucia Rosso di Montalcino has an elegant pale ruby color, with just the slightest bit of a rim developing. Aromatically there is a nice burst of dark cherry fruit along with a bit of earthiness. Somewhere all of the scents, I could make out a bit of smokiness and a dried herb note. I know certain Indian tribes like to tie up a bundle of dried sage and then light it for ceremonies and I can’t help but wonder if this wine smells like that. Or I could just have watched Thunderheart too many times. But once I was able to get a bit of this rosso in my mouth, that’s when the real fun began. If Brunellos are serious and muscular in terms of tannin, this rosso is fun and smooth. No rough tannin edges here, just some nice structure and a nice bit of juicy acidity. It’s racy and fresh, and Chianti lovers are going to like this wine a whole lot. The flavors are still in the dark fruit range, but perhaps more to the tart black raspberry side, along with a wee it of cedar. And there’s definitely some wet rock and fresh-turned earth qualities here as well.

I recently poured this wine for a family friend, a friend who grew up outside of Florence. This person normally doesn’t drink wines that cost over ten or twelve bucks and I caught him muttering “troppo nizza,” so I think he liked it. I noticed he also polished off half a bottle if that is any indication. I like to look at Rosso di Montalcino as the fun side of Brunello. If Brunello Riserva is the wedding, Rosso di Montalcino is the fling. Somebody once wrote “think Brunello, drink rosso” and I can appreciate that phrase more than ever after a few bottles of the Santa Lucia.

The 2004 Santa Lucia Brunello goes for about 50.00 to 60.00 a bottle, so their Rosso di Montalcino represents quite a value at half that price. Thanks to Paolo, we get this wine directly from the winery so we are able to a bit better than it’s regular retail price of just under thirty bucks a bottle. Quantities are fairly limited but if we run out, there is a new shipment arriving in Portland in about a month. So if you order this wine now, you will pay 27.00 a bottle. For 6-11 bottles the price drops to 24.00 per bottle. Or you may get a case of twelve bottles, in which case the per bottle price drops to 22.00. So if you are in need of a fine bottle of wine, one that is ready to make you happy while you wait for its burlier twin to come out of its slumber, I suggest you give this pretty, but humble, rosso a try!

Friday Night Wine Tasting, Jan. 8, 6:00-9:00PM; Bye-bye Brianne!

Our intrepid world traveler, not to mention assistant to the Head Storyteller and Eyrie tasting room manager, Brianne Day is headed off to South America to work the upcoming wine harvest. So it will be several months before Brianne stands behind the copper tasting bar at Storyteller Wine Company. In honor of this bon voyage I have put together a very nice tasting for Friday evening. There will be champagne from Marc Chauvet (if it was good enough for Jancis Robinson’s eldest daughter’s wedding reception, it is good enough for us), a special wine from The Eyrie Vineyards, a mystery Pinot Noir from one of the Willamette Valley’s finest winemakers, a Chenin Blanc from South Africa and a wine from one of the Rhone’s most famous producers. That Rhone wine, by the way, made the Wine Spectator’s latest Top 100 Wines but we are willing to overlook that and pour it anyway. And if you have ever been to one of our tastings, you know there is a good chance there will be a few surprise bottles on hand. Speaking of which, the “super pour” this Friday evening will be an older vintage of a superb Sauvignon Blanc that was made with fruit from vines that have spent the better part of the last six decades pushing up through clay, flint, limestone and a gazillion little marine fossils in the Loire Valley. Can you say “see-lex” ? I know you can. There will be no charge for the regular portion of this tasting.

Saturday Wine Tasting, Jan. 9, 12:00-5:00PM: Pinks!

We pride ourselves on being contrarians. So this Saturday we will be drinking pink and offering 20% off on every bottle of pink wine in the store, still or bubbly. There will be no charge for this tasting.

Cheers and Welcome to 2010,
Michael Alberty
Head Storyteller

Visit www.StorytellerWine.com >>
5511-B SW Hood Ave, Portland | (503) 206-7029 | 1.800.753.2531

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