Conti Costanti

Conti Costanti sits at Colle al Matrichese, on the hill just below the walls of Montalcino in southern Tuscany. It is one of the oldest names in the town and one of the smallest producers of any consequence there. The property covers 25 hectares in total, of which about 12 are vineyard, four are olive groves and the rest is woodland and fallow ground.

The Costanti are an old Sienese family whose recorded history goes back to the fifteenth century. They arrived in Montalcino around the fall of the Sienese Republic in the 1550s and stayed, acquiring land that ran from Colle al Matrichese out towards Bibbiano and Sovignano. In 1711 two brothers, Crescenzio and Carlo, were made hereditary Counts for their service to Venice, which is where the Conti in the name comes from. The part that matters for wine is later. Tito Costanti, a count and a lawyer, showed a wine he called Brunello at the Siena provincial exhibition in August 1870, made from the 1865 harvest at 14 degrees of alcohol. That puts the family among the small handful of people who effectively invented the category. A century later Emilio Costanti, a doctor as well as a grower, took the wine from something passed between friends to something people queued for.

Andrea Costanti took over in 1983, very young, and has run the estate ever since. His vineyards sit between 310 and 400 metres, which is high for Montalcino, on the cooler northern side of the zone, on galestro: the friable, flaky rock you also find in the best parts of Chianti Classico. Vine density runs from 3,333 to 5,500 plants per hectare and the Sangiovese is the local Brunello selection. Three hectares are planted to Merlot and Cabernet, which is where the Ardingo comes from.

The winemaking is deliberately unshowy. Fermentation happens on the skins in stainless steel and lasts two to three weeks depending on the year. The Brunello then goes into Slavonian oak casks of 30 hectolitres, between three and fifteen years old, with some five-hectolitre barriques alongside. The younger wines see three-year-old Allier barriques of 225 and 335 litres at medium toast. There is no new-oak signature and no attempt to make the wine bigger than it is. Andrea Costanti is also plain about the Riserva: he declares one only when the year is genuinely exceptional, which he reckons happens about three times a decade, and he treats it as the bottle that will still be alive in decades rather than the showiest one in the cellar.

Everything in that list points the same way. Large, old Slavonian casks rather than small new barrels, a moderate maceration, and a Riserva declared only three times a decade. Costanti has a long-standing reputation as one of the traditional houses of Montalcino rather than one of the modernist ones, and the winemaking above is why.

The Brunello di Montalcino is the estate's calling card. The Brunello di Montalcino Riserva is the bottle Andrea makes only in the years he rates. The Vermiglio Rosso di Montalcino is the earlier-drinking Sangiovese from the same vineyards. Ardingo is the odd one out, a Merlot from those newer plantings.

Costanti also distils two grappe from Brunello marc at Gioacchino Cannoni in Paganico, and makes a straight Rosso di Montalcino, which is a separate wine from the Vermiglio.