Every day or two, I get another retailer’s email offering multiple 2019 Brunellos marked down. I haven’t noticed so many close-outs for any other category.
I don’t pay much attention to Brunello, but I’m curious: Does this reflect the vintage? The category?
The vintage is excellent.
I think Brunello has had a bit of a marketing issue in recent years while Chianti is more popular for Sangiovese. Add in the talent of Chiara Condello in Emilia-Romagna and they need to find new markets for their wines (Montalcino strongly focuses on the US market) or put in more marketing to the younger generations.
Interesting. I haven’t been following but knowing that 19’ was an excellent Brunello year I will have to poke around and see if there are any deals locally I can snag.
Zachy’s and Grapes have sent multiple pitches, but so has Morrell.
They make oceans of it.
The vintage is supposed to be pretty good.
Terrific vintage, but significant quantities and the price hikes have been substantial in recent years. Also Brunello does not seem to have the cache of Barolo or Barbaresco, and even Chianti has a stronger brand name in the lower price categories. For my part, most of my Italian wines in the cellar are Brunellos- but it is not an easy path to find unless you do a lot of tasting.
Additionally, there are broader market-wide issues where there are just a lot of good vintages of wines from all over the world that have not sold through as well as hoped in the wake of a confluence of significant price increases, inflation pressures on the consumer and cooling interest in wine among younger generations.
One more thing to note- rumors of 2021 being quite spectacular do not help either.
Which producers do you like?
Soldera and Stella di Campalto are my primary focus. Also very fond of Val di Suga.
Brunello is generally very available with fair pricing. Kind of like Bordeaux in that respect.
Some view that as a negative. To me, I think it’s nice how you don’t have to chase and claw so hard to get good wines.
Whatever the market is for Brunello, it seems that demand for the most-watched Super Tuscans has held up:
I was asking myself the same question! Lots of marked down 2019 Brunellos right now. Empire State of Wine has a bunch of Ragnaie and Valdicava below market.
I’ve never gotten into Brunello - have yet to have an aged one I loved. Went to a Vinous dinner of 2010 Brunello 1.5 years ago and it was mostly disappointing, although Stella’s 2010 Riserva was really good. I went to a Biondi Santi dinner a few years ago with stuff from the 60s-00s which was impressive albeit not that exciting IMO, certainly for the price of the wines.
I guess I wonder who buys all the Brunello in the first place. I don’t know many people into them.
Would love to try some Soldera, and I’ve bought a few of them to cellar. Those I am sure I will enjoy based on what I’ve read about the style, but they seem like a total outlier within the region.
In general, as we all know, there is too much wine going around right now and prices seem to be falling all over the place. Not sure if that’s true of the absolute top tier wines, but certainly Barolo/Barbaresco prices seem to be falling pretty meaningfully in some cases and availability is high.
adding Poggio di Sotto to Tom’s list
Whoops!
Brunello has been a very hyped wine region for a long time, and those of us who got suckered into cellaring a bunch of it eventually noticed:
Chianti
2010 was great. As was 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2019. And the years in between were not bad; certainly drinkable. Generally speaking, of course. That’s a whole lot of supply, and demand that seems to be flat. That translates into lower prices. From a consumer perspective, it’s a good buying opportunity.
2010 San Polo was outstanding.
Others less memorable. Not a wide sample selection.
Keith, I’m surprised by this comment, or am I not understanding? Producer and vintage seem to be pretty good indicators.