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Sunday, December 27, 2020

Giulio Gambelli's important contributions in the formative stages of Brunello di Montalcino DOC

Giulio Gambelli did not have the academic chops or geographic reach of Emile Peynaud, but the love and respect that he commanded in Italian wine circles, and the impact that he had on Tuscan Sangiovese producers, was akin to that of Peynaud in Bordeaux. They were both master tasters and used their tasting abilities to inform the advice that they imparted to their clients.

I have embarked on a journey to identify producers and estates whch have benefited from an association with Giulio and to date I have reported on his relationships with Villa Rosa (Castellina in Chianti), Montevertine (Radda in Chianti), Soldera, Cerbaiona, and Poggio di Sotto (the latter three from Montalcino). I have recently come upon a rather unexpected relationship that is recounted in Kerin O'Keefe's Brunello di Montalcino.

According to Kerin, at the close of the 1950s, there were between 10 and 15 growers in Montalcino, including still existing estates such as Biondi-Santi, Fattoria dei Barbi, and Il Poggione. In 1966 Brunello di Montalcino was awarded DOC status along with other leading regions Barolo, Barbaresco, and (fellow Sangiovese traveller) Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. The Brunello production codes, largely written by Tancredi Biondi Santi, was one of Italy's toughest. It is summarized in the chart below.


One year after being awarded DOC status, the producers formed the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino. A minimum of 25 signatures were required to form the organization but there were not 25 grape growers in the region at the time. The group finally assembled were "for the most part, completely inexperienced in the art and technique of winemaking." According to Kerin, several of those who joined initially only had wheat fields while another group was planting grapevines along with other cash crops. 

The Consorzio realized that they lacked the skills to meet their stated goals so they went out and enlisted the services of guess who?
In the early 1970s, the group enlisted the services of Giulio Gambelli, one of the most respected and well-liked figures in the Italian wine world, who would consult for the Consorzio members until the end of the 1990s.
Kerin goes on to describe Giulio's exalted position in the wine world:
Surprisingly modest given his enormous talent, Gambelli is without a doubt a Sangiovese genius. Known in Italy as the maestro assaggiatore, or master taster, in reference to his extraordinary palate, as of 2011 the eighty-six-year-old Gambelli was still consulting for cult Brunello firms Case Basse, Poggio di Sotto, and Il Colle, as well as the celebrated Montevertine firm in Radda in Chianti. Gambelli is not officially called an enologist, for the simple fact that he never had any academic enological training, but was instead discovered while still a young teenager by the late Tancredi Biondi Santi.
Tancredi had been so impressed with the 14 year-old's skills that he hired him as a cellar assistant, first at the Enopolio Cooperative and then at Greppo, the Bondi Santi winery. It is these conditions under which Gambelli gained his early Sangiovese expertise. Gambelli has always claimed that, in addition to vinification techniques, one of the fundamentals that he learned from Tancredi "was the absolute importance of hygiene in the cellar."

The Consorzio also hired Bruno Ciatti as its agronomy expert and the two, either together or separately, would visit each Montalcino cellar to "offer assistance and advice." Gambelli would try the wines and consult on the winemaking process. He also passed on the lesson he learned from Tancredi re clean cellars. 

Kerin quoted Stefano Campatelli, a former director of the Consorzio, as saying that Gambelli visited each cellar at least once a year. The visits were organized for the spring time and he would visit over 100 wineries in two months. Gambelli has referred to some of those early cellars as being "... mostly transformed stables and stalls, with all the imaginable problems. Above all, there was still the odor of livestock but also of salami and ham because many people back then had the custom of seasoning the meat in their cantine."

According to Kerin:
His advice was very much appreciated even by firms with in-house enologists, but since most wineries at the time did not have an onsite enologist, Giulio's advice was a crucial moment for the producers to review the evolving wines.
Giulio, then had an important and formative influence on a broader spectrum of Brunello di Montalcino than I had imagined.


©Wine -- Mise en abyme

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