Seeing an uptick of these popping up from various sources( Incredible vintage I know) Are people dumping them as past peak or are they drinking well? I have no experience with this vintage.
Wouldn’t recommend it. I bought a fair amount (or at least more than I usually do of any given region in Italy in any given vintage) based on the Wine Spectator hype, and ended up regretting it. The bulk of them did not age well and/or turned funky, e.g., CastelGiocondo turned quite drying, and Poggio Antico developed a vinegary streak.
I had basically the same experience.
97 IMO opinion for Brunello I wouldn’t buy. I had several this year and they aren’t holding up on the whole. Stay with 99,01 and 04 if you’re buying. My 2 cents
Agree, esp. with 99 and 01.
Fair enough, but that is 6 years ago.
No insight on '97. But '01, '04, '06, & '10 are remarkable. 2010 is readily available now and a good investment for drinking now and in the future, IMO.
2010 sure seems to have everything going for it but it’s very young. I didn’t put 06 in what to buy and I should’ve as what I’ve tasted has been great. I’ve tasted a lot of 99 and a lot of 01 and on my experience, I’d do a slight lean on 99 compared to 01. 1999 to me is really really great and will continue to drink well for another 10/30 years depending on the producer. It’s time to party like its 1999
I had a '97 Fattoi within the past year and it was sensational; we tasted it blind along with another Tuscan wine, Siepi perhaps, but one of our group said about the Fattoi when he tasted it, “Wow, this one is a Ferrari!” It was aging perfectly and seemed to still have upside potential.
Poggio Salvi was lovely and going strong 5 years ago. I can’t image it having gone downhill since. I’ve got one more, will revisit in a few more years.
The good '97s are really good. The problem is that there are so many bad Brunellos out there, and if you went shopping based on the scores those are probably the ones you have.
Why was 97 considered a great vintage at the time and why haven’t they aged we’ll compared to 99, 01, 04, and 06? What similarities are there to 10?
The 97’s were very enjoyable and did age well- for a decade.
This.
Well, unless you bought solely upon the scores of Ed Beltrami, who stood in for Steve Tanzer at IWC for the 1997 Brunello vintage. Ed gave ALL Of the wines a score of “97”, so if one bought them all, there must be a couple of good ones in there! 
It was a warm, ripe year, so it tended to win critics’ points, as 2007 did. And they were attractive young.
I haven’t had a lot of 97s in recent years, but the bad ones I’ve had tended to be overalcoholic and sort of hollow.
I’ve had a handful within the past couple of years. They drank well and were certainly in that “ready” place. Although not a Brunello, I tasted a '97 Flaccianello last night and it was drinking really well and going strong.
I drank a 97 Il Poggione tonight at La Quercia in Vancouver, whose excellent Piemontese-inspired food was a good foil for Brunello. Popped and poured after sampling a bit. That seemed to be the right call. The last quarter of the bottle was decanted to get it off the (substantial) sediment. Temperature-controlled storage since it was purchased on release.
This wine was in line with my past experiences with 97s. There was a slightly hollow quality – a lot of alcohol for the underlying concentration – and it was more evolved than you’d expect for a highly touted year.
A slight oxidized note on the nose at first, with lots of roasted and dried fruit scents. A very slight Port note. The sommelier and I figured it might not do well with a decant.
In the mouth, the alcohol was fairly conspicuous at the beginning and the fruit was a bit attenuated. With air and the main courses (a squab and mushroom ragu on thick noodles and a ragu of duck organs with tajarin), it seemed to flesh out a bit and was fruitier. Not a lot of secondary evolution, though, or complexity.
Bottom line: Nice enough, but not terribly well balanced and not very complex. Not something I’d fork out $60 for on release. If I were scoring, maybe 86 or 87 points for me. Not sure if this is going anywhere. I have more so I’ll have to think about whether to keep it or not.
I should add that I generally like Il Poggione when I have it in blind tastings around the time of release. But I can’t recall a mature one that really wowed me.
Glad I drank my one and only 1997 Il Poggione very young. And it did wow me at the time.