Why it matters
The producer
Donatella Cinelli Colombini makes Brunello di Montalcino at Casato Prime Donne, a 40-hectare estate in Montalcino where every person in the cellar, from the vintners to the winemaker, is a woman. That arrangement has been in place since the winery opened in 2002 and it is the product of a deliberate founding decision, not a coincidence of hiring.
The Casato property has been in Donatella's maternal family since the late sixteenth century. In 1998, she separated from the wider Cinelli family group, took ownership of Casato and a second farm at Fattoria del Colle near Trequanda, and combined them under her name as a 370-hectare estate. She rebuilt both wineries from scratch and replanted 34 hectares of vineyard in the years that followed.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Montalcino is a hilltop town in southern Tuscany, south of Siena, and the zone around it carries the Brunello di Montalcino DOCG, one of Italy's longest-ageing red-wine designations. The grape is Sangiovese, grown here under the local synonym Brunello. Altitude, warm days and cool nights, and the wide variation in clay, limestone and sandy soils across the hillsides give the wines their combination of dark-fruit weight and cutting acidity.
Casato Prime Donne occupies 40 hectares on the Montalcino hill, with 17 hectares planted to Sangiovese. Three of those hectares are dedicated specifically to Rosso di Montalcino, the zone's shorter-aged red, and the rest feed the Brunello. The Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino lists the estate at Località Casato 17 in Montalcino.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
At Casato Prime Donne, the 17 hectares of Sangiovese are harvested by an all-women team. Fermentation takes place in eight open-topped bare-concrete vats: truncated-cone shaped, temperature-controlled, and worked with plungers for manual punch-down. Concrete keeps the ferment cooler and more even than steel and adds no flavour of its own, allowing the Sangiovese to express the hill rather than the vessel.
After fermentation, Brunello moves into artisan-made French-oak casks of 5 and 7 hectolitres. These are smaller than the traditional Slavonian oak botti used elsewhere in Montalcino, but far larger than barriques, which are not used at any stage. The wine spends at least two years in those casks before transfer to 15- to 40-hectolitre barrels for the remainder of its ageing requirement. The smaller French casks impart gentle oxygen contact and a light integration without pushing vanilla or toasted wood into the wine.
Wines to know
The range in view
The Casato Prime Donne range centres on two Montalcino wines.
Brunello di Montalcino is 100% Sangiovese from the 17-hectare Casato block, aged through the estate's French-oak programme and released after the full DOCG minimum ageing requirement. The wine carries dark cherry, dried rose petal, and mineral depth on the nose, with firm, drying tannin and a long, acidic finish. It is built to age and sits at the top of the range.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
Start with the Rosso di Montalcino. It comes from three hectares inside the same 17-hectare Casato block as the Brunello, carries the same 100% Sangiovese, and is vinified through the same non-barrique cellar approach. What it gives at an earlier point in its life is the mineral acidity and red-fruit clarity of the Montalcino hill without the extended tannin grip and ageing requirement of the Brunello. The tannin frame is lighter, the fruit more forward, and the window for drinking opens much sooner. It is the same vineyard, the same philosophy, and an earlier version of the same wine.