Brunello

In medieval Tuscan dialect, 'bruno' meant dark or dusky, inherited from the Germanic 'brun' that the Lombards carried into Italy when they crossed the Alps in 568 CE. The word attached itself to dark-complexioned people, to brown earth, to swarthy oxen. Its diminutive, 'brunello,' meant the little dark thing, a fondly reduced version of a quality already noticed. In the hills around Montalcino, this diminutive became the local name for a particular grape variety whose skins stayed darker than the surrounding Sangiovese clones.

Ferruccio Biondi-Santi identified and isolated what he called Brunello in the 1870s, working at his estate Il Greppo on the southern slopes of Monte Amiata. He made his first deliberate Brunello di Montalcino in 1888, aged in large Slavonian oak casks for years before release. His grandson Franco maintained bottles of the 1888 vintage intact until the 1970s, when international critics confirmed they were still drinkable. No other Italian wine had demonstrated that capacity at that date.

The wine remained nearly invisible for decades. As late as 1960, production was almost entirely within the Biondi-Santi family. The Brunello Consortium formed in 1967 with eleven members; DOC status came in 1968 and DOCG in 1980, making Brunello di Montalcino the first wine in Italy to receive that designation. Robert Parker's scores in the 1980s and 1990s drove international demand and prices that the Biondi-Santis had never imagined.

Today Brunello means one specific thing globally: 100% Sangiovese Grosso from Montalcino, aged five years before release, capable of lasting fifty years in bottle. The Brunello Consortium now counts over 200 producers, a dramatic expansion from the eleven members of 1967. The Tuscan dialect's affectionate diminutive for a dark-skinned grape now labels bottles that sell for several hundred dollars and outlive the people who buy them.