Le Chiuse Le Chiuse Brunello di Montalcino 2017 750ml

One of the best wines of the vintage, this stunner opens with compelling aromas of new leather, forest floor, perfumed berry and menthol. Full-bodied and elegantly structured, the delicious palate delivers crushed raspberry, ripe Marasca cherry, baking spice and licorice set against firm, refined tannins. It boasts remarkable freshness and balance for the hot vintage. Drink 2025–2032.

The Le Chiuse 2021 Brunello di Montalcino is a lovely wine and one of my favorites from a vintage that is not always easy to read. It delivers its message clearly with dark fruit, blue flower, grilled herb and sweet cedar, showing a sense of fullness and aromatic completeness that is not always present in this year. Soft and silky on the palate, the wine offers gentle, powdery tannins supported by good underlying structure, achieving balance without force. Sourced as a special selection from eight hectares of organically farmed vineyards with cool exposures, this bottling demonstrates how site and restraint can successfully interpret variety and vintage. Production is 19,800 bottles.

The Le Chiuse 2020 Brunello di Montalcino (made with organic fruit) is a wine that prizes transparency and tension with cassis, Rainier cherry and raspberry coulis. I really love the bold fruit intensity that shines in this wine. To the palate, it offers subtle sweetness contrasted by bright acidity and silky tannins. This is a solid Brunello choice from 2020. Production is 18,800 bottles. (Monica Larner)

A beguiling bouquet of crushed roses, violets and a flourish of exotic spice leads to dried strawberries and wet stone as the 2020 Brunello di Montalcino blossoms in the glass. This opens on the palate with a pretty inner sweetness, displaying textures of pure silk and an unexpected richness that's perfectly offset by tantalizing acidity. While nearly fleshy in feel, the balance within is otherworldly. The 2020 finishes with a staining of grippy tannins offset by a tinge of sour citrus, leaving the senses salivating for more. This possesses the exuberance of the vintage but also the harmony to mature beautifully over the medium term. I tasted the 2020 from two bottles while in Montalcino earlier this year that did not perform anywhere near as well as this bottle did. Lorenzo Magnelli of Le Chiuse explained that the winery had experimented with different corks on 1,000 bottles and noted that those bottles will not be released to the public. The bottle I tasted for this note was finished with the winery's standard corks. (Eric Guido)