If you’re lucky enough to be one of the few people on the planet that owns this wine, congratulations, you’ve hit pay dirt, as they say.

The air is rather thin here, not so many have risen so high. From the very first smell, and right through to the final sip, you’re patently aware of just how majestic this wine is.

(above: I’d asked friends from CA to join me during my appointment @ilpalazzone )

I visit ~ one hundred Italian wineries each year. Before that, dozens in France and California each year. Something I’ve heard often during those visits, but moreover, read, usually in marketing pieces, is just how much went into making the wine. Silently, I’ve always asked myself, “how much what?”. How much oak? How much cropping? How much work devoted to soil health? What can be many things.

In the case of Il Palazzone, that ‘what‘ is brilliantly clear, it’s love, it’s passion, it’s an ability to be one with the land; it’s giving respect, and yielding (pun intended) the fruit of that act.

Prior to my visit here a few months ago, I really had no idea as to their farming practices. Having seen it first-hand, and having met their deeply passionate stewardess, Laura Gray, it’s obvious that words like care and attention can have different meanings, be held to different standards. These standards, the ones I saw before me in the vineyards, the standards that then followed through to my experience with this wine, were most certainly of a higher order. Definitions can be cheeky devils, each of us defining what our idea of hard work, or good wine, etc., is like. I really like Il Palazzone’s definition of passion; it’s food for the brain, the soul.

A lengthy story will follow here on my blog (one that really digs in to their environmentally sustainable approach to winegrowing), but for now, I just wanted to at least report on my experience with this wine, one I’ve tried twice now. And while it’s very good today, exceptionally good, it’s only going to improve with time, more fully developing its deep cache of complexity, its well of secrets.

12 July, 2017 – 2010 Il Palazzone Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (HR+)  My second time with this, the first was two months ago while visiting the estate; I was in love then, and again tonight. This is a special wine, and if you’re looking for an experience, i.e. not just something to drink, this should be on your short list. Profoundly aromatic, with a deep, beautiful sense of place. The purity resonates on the nose, and gracefully follows through to the medium>medium+ bodied palate. This is just a babe now, so you’d do well to take care of it. If you’re lucky enough to have a few, and haven’t tasted it yet, by all means, open one up, this will light up your day/night. The upper echelons of grape and place, in my glass. Now or in the next 20 years. highly recommended+

From Coravin, with 30 minutes of air before tasting.

To the entire team at Il Palazzone, please, keep doing what you’re doing; it’s working, and it’s very much appreciated.