This is one of my all-time favorite Brunellos, and although personal tastes are fluid and may change from time to time, there is something timeless and solid about this wine. It's like a touchstone. The Casanova di Neri 2017 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova is graced with a similar interlude of elegant rose or crushed flower that we saw in the annata wine. It appears more prominently here, and with more shape and focused intensity. Make no mistake, Giacomo Neri builds wines for pleasure and sensual impact, and this wine (helped by a hot growing season and 15% alcohol) ticks all those boxes. But it also shows floral elegance and sour cherry freshness that defies our expectations of the vintage.
Giacomo Neri and his family have crafted a wine that impresses from the first sip forward (especially when the wine is given ample time to open). The Casanova di Neri 2015 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova must be treated with patience, and that patience is returned with many great rewards. Blackberry, plum and summer cherry are slowly folded into lasting flavours of spice, leather and beautiful balsam or medical herb. These are always a distinctive signature of this estate.
The aromas flow with seamless transitions, and that fluid and ever-changing nature of the bouquet is what helps to build intensity and staying power. Fruit is harvested from a south- and southeast-facing slope at 250 to 300 meters above sea level. The soils are mixed loosely with crushed rock, allowing access to air and moisture. Indeed, mineral accents appear as the wine takes on more air in the glass. What stands out most in this Brunello is the quality of the bouquet that is rigid and firm, yet not excessively so. You feel the structural texture of the wine as it sits firmly over the palate, yet there is mobility and softness to its many moving parts.
This edition of Casanova di Neri's celebrated single-vineyard wine opens to a luminous garnet color and exuberant fruit aromas. The 2012 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova offers a lot to the bouquet, from sweet cherry aromas to savory tones of tobacco and leather. This wine shows a powerful inner motor of flavor concentration and density that propels it forward. All that density and richness wraps thickly over the palate. This is a lasting wine of brawn and muscle.
The 2011 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova is a direct and powerful wine from a hot vintage. Dark fruit aromas segue to candied cherry, moist pipe tobacco, balsam herb and dark granite stone. In the mouth, this is a compact and hard-bodied wine that still needs time to flesh out and relax. Like all of Casanova di Neri's wine, this Brunello offers a unique level of volume and fullness that you don't easily find in the other wines of Montalcino.
This is a gorgeous wine. The 2010 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova is just as impressive now as when I first tasted it three years ago. The only edit I would make to my original 100-point review is an extension to the drinking window. The bouquet is absolutely seamless, yet it shows pencil-point precision with dark fruit that flows into spice, tobacco and crushed mineral. The wine's aromatic intensity is forthright and compelling, as is the polished and fine nature of the mouthfeel. This is a cellar keeper.
The 2001 Brunello di Montalcino Tenuta Nuova is an interesting proposition. Either the wine has not fully opened, or perhaps it remains stuck in a shy or reticent phase. There is so much brooding dark fruit, right there at an arm's distance that, seemingly wants to bubble to the top. For whatever reason, it remains stuck at the back. Maybe it needs more time? The wine flaunts deep concentration and an inky dark appearance. The bouquet is all about those dark fruit tones with blackberry pie, black spice, tar, liquorice and smoke. Mineral notes and campfire ash appear on the dusty, polished finish.