Tornesi, Rosso di Montalcino

No one really wins in showdowns between Italian and French wines (do what I do—drink them both!), but I am compelled once again to pit an Italian wine against a French one for the sake of context. I’ll keep it short, though: If this exceptional $29 Rosso di Montalcino was a Bourgogne Rouge, there’d be pandemonium in the SommSelect shopping cart.Like Bourgogne Rouge, Rosso di Montalcino is the entry-level wine by design, and like our favorite Bourgogne reds, today’s 2016 proves that “entry-level” is not a synonym for “simple”—in the right hands, of course. In Montalcino, many producers choose the bigger-is-better approach when it comes to their Rosso di Montalcino, using richness and intensity to make their value play, but in the case of the historic Tornesi property, purity and place take precedence. This is just a spot-on expression of the Sangiovese grape as grown in Montalcino, just a touch burlier than is cousins from Chianti but still finessed and perfumed and full of the kind of