Tasting Report: My First Impression on 2010 Brunello Riservas

I did a preliminary tasting of about 70 2010 Brunello di Montalcino Riservas a few weeks ago in Tuscany and they are tremendous quality. I expect them to live up to the anticipation of tens of thousands of keen Brunello lovers, especially those who purchased the regular bottlings earlier this year from the great vintage.

The 2010 Brunello Riservas will be available on the market from January 2016, and indeed I will taste them again in the coming months to confirm my first impressions in this report. 

I must admit that I had my doubts about the 2010 riservas before the blind tasting. In the past, I found many riservas either the same quality level or worse than the regular bottlings. Some seemed to be the same wine but just aged another year in bottle before their release.

But this clearly was not the case given my findings from this recent tasting, and a large part of the riservas that I tasted are more structured and more tannic than the regular bottlings, underlying that the wines are indeed reserve wines of their respective winery. Many are also produced from specific vineyards.

"We did the very best we could in 2010 with our Cerretalto," says Giacomo Neri, the owner of Casanova di Neri. His 2010 Cerratalto is a perfect wine and shows the incredible depth and power one would expect in such a phenomenal young Brunello.

"I think nearly everyone in Montalcino tried to do their very best with the riservas in 2010," adds Fabrizio Bindocci, head of the Brunello producers' wine producer association, the Consorzio del Brunello di Montalcino. He also runs Il Poggione, a prestigious Brunello producer.

The biggest problem with the 2010 Brunello Riservas is that they are much higher priced than the regular bottlings and boast much smaller production. Moreover, many producers have tied in the sale of their 2010 riservas with the regular bottlings of 2011 - this is for merchants and not consumers. However, wine merchants shouldn't worry too much about this as the 2011s are excellent quality. (I will post my preliminary tasting notes on the 2011s – about 100 in total – some time next week.)

Check out the notes below and make some selections. Most of them are wines not to drink for a few years, if you can hold back! Also, put away some money for your wine budget because they are going to be more expensive than the 2010 Brunellos first sold earlier this year.