Is anyone surprised that Casanova di Neri is one of the wineries investigated? Let’s see…how do we make a Brunello that will get 100 points in America and laugh all the way to the bank? Easy…make it taste like a cab/shiraz fruit bomb! Gotta love it.
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Really, were any of those implicated a surprise at all? When you first heard about Brunellopoli who did you assume they were talking about? I’ve always considered Banfi a California winery that happens to be in Tuscany. Antinori has another operation in (surprise) Puglia! Argiano and Frescobaldi were maybe a little less obvious. The only thing that surprises me about Casanova di Neri is that Suckling’s other darling, Valdicava, didn’t get caught up too. Maybe some would have thought Gaja would have broken the rules but Angelo has never been afraid to be upfront when he disagrees with the DOCG. If he wanted to add Merlot he’d just call his wines Rennina and Sugarile and skip the Consortium.
That said, some of the cheaters make excellent wine and there’s room for both styles just don’t try to call it Brunello. I think it’s all a tempest in a teapot in typical Italian style. 99% of the producers we know and love still make real Brunello and it’s still the iconic wine of Tuscany. Life goes on, Juve and Fiorentina are still in Serie A, Brunello will survive. The biggest loser here is Suckling who continued to rave about Super-Brunelli while Galloni and Tanzer were wisely questioning the veracity of the wines.
Surprised me also. That and the finding only going back to 2003… The bottles of 2001 CdN and 1999 Valdicava I’ve had were such huge, dark wines that I recall thinking “How did they get sangio to do this?”
I don’t want to open that pandora’s box, but yea, when I heard about brunellopoli, Moggiopoli was the first thing I thought of