Each month, David Brenner of Villasfor2 in Abruzzo recommends a ‘Special Italian Wine’ for you to try and enjoy at home – or on your Abruzzo holiday.

Rosso di Montalcino 'La Magia' DOC 2006. Schwarz. 

When it comes to special Italian wine, there's nothing much more special in terms of either quality or price-tag as Tuscany's rightly-famed Brunello di Montalcino DOCG. You'll need to start thinking in terms of €30 for what passes as an 'average' bottle: triple that for a bottle from a great year produced by a top winery. But you can get a taste of what all the fuss is about for a fraction of those stratospheric sums.

Rosso di Montalcino DOC comes from exactly the same area as its more famed sibling around the town of Montalcino in southern Tuscany. It's made from exactly the same Brunello grapes – (a sangiovese variant) – but it's a younger wine and costs around a third as much. 

Full-blown Brunello di Montalcino spends at least three years in wood and doesn't get released until 4 years after the harvest – 5 years for a 'Riserva'.

Rosso di Montalcino in contrast only spends 6 months in the  barrel and is released the year after the vintage. Consequently, it's lighter and fresher.

While BdiM has a heritage stretching back to the Middle Ages, the 'baby Brunello' is a brash upstart that can trace its roots all the way back to – 1984. Its existence the reaction to Brunello producers who wanted a little more immediate cash flow while waiting for the top wines to mature.

The one thing both wines have in common – aside from usually immaculate production techniques – is they're both made from 100% Brunello grape. This particular bottle comes from the 'La Magia' winery owned by the Schwarz family, who come from the Alto Adige region of north-east Italy. Production's not large – around 40,000 bottles of this wine from each vintage.

Time to uncork the bottle – and again the plea, if you can remember, to open this and decant the wine into a suitable container an hour or so before you want to drink it. It really does make a difference.

The colour is a rich garnet. The initial scent is a powerful blend of tar, black treacle and liquorice laced with damson preserve which – trust me – is better in the glass than it looks on the page.  The taste is another extraordinary treat. A trace of trademark Brunello tannins, but quite soft and again that unctuous blend of dark fruit compote with now just a hint of liquorice. The finish is very long.

The vintage – 2006 – was very good, exceptional even, in Tuscany and this wine has the legs for another five years at least before it starts to fade. It's so good, that you want to choose carefully the food to accompany it. Nothing too rich or fancy. Bistecca Fiorentina would be a good starting point. As was the char-grilled veal chop with rosemary that was my choice. The slice of gooey taleggio cheese that followed went sinfully well with this wine too.

At A Glance…

• This month's featured wine: Rosso di Montalcino 'La Magia'
• Vintage: 2006
• Producer: Schwarz
• Designation: DOC
• Grape: 100% Brunello (Sangiovese)
• Strength: 14%
• Closure: Cork
• This bottle cost: €12.90

Next Month…

A white wine for a summer lunch. Soave Classico from a top winery in the very heart of the production region around Verona. A delicious accompaniment to a meal – or a wine to enjoy just on its own at home, or on your Abruzzo holiday !

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Eating and Drinking, Special Italian Wine, Vineyards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.