Area of Rosso di Montalcino plus 350 hectares

The members' meeting of the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino today, December 14, approved the expansion of the claimable area for the Rosso di Montalcino DOC. The subsequent Board of Directors of the Consortium then ratified the decision. For President Bindocci, this is a strategic choice for the competitiveness of the denomination.

For the DOC vineyard, currently 519.7 hectares, an increase of 350 hectares has been defined, with an additional allowance of 4 percent, bringing the overall total to 364 hectares. The additional production potential of Rosso di Montalcino will thus be a little more than 3 million bottles (0.75 liters) to be added to the current average of 3.6 million pieces per year found over the last five years. A figure, the latter, considered by the Consortium to be too light in the face of an international demand increasingly interested in the denomination's wines.

"We thought," said the president of the Consorzio del vino Brunello di Montalcino, Fabrizio Bindocci, "of a sustainable model for the competitiveness of a wine in excellent health, whose congenital weakness lies precisely in the scarcity of product. At the same time, we felt it was important to implement the expansion without planting an inch of additional vines: in fact, the additional 350 hectares are already on the maps of the territory as shares of vineyards planted with Sangiovese but free from quota rolls. With this choice, the members and other businesses in the area will have the opportunity to re-establish an optimal productive condition and at the same time not to "stress" the production of grapes from the vineyards claimed to Brunello, protecting the quality of the product. Now, for formal ratification, the proposal will have to go through the Region of Tuscany, which actively collaborated in the definition of the plan."

The proposal document approved today in the assembly indicates the digressive method behind the expansion: for wineries up to 10 hectares of registered claimable area, the increase will go up to 15 percent; scaled down percentages granted for larger vineyards, covered in 2 other categories (up to 20 hectares and over). The result will also be to encourage the growth of small holdings; in fact, there are 258 wineries included in the first cluster (up to 10 hectares), compared to 52 in the remaining larger categories.

Source: Consorzio del Brunello di Montalcino press office.