New mapping tool will ‘better inform customers’ about Brunello vintages

The Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino has changed its communication around the vintages of the iconic wine, based on a complex new mapping tool that makes use of high quality and detail data. The organisation has created a new geo-viticultural map of the entire appellation, which take into account the complexity of the altitude, geology and topography and rainfall in order to present a more accurate description and guide to each vintage . The map was created in collaboration with agrotech company Copernico, alongside the university of Pisa and Croatia and Italy’s first MW, Gabriele Gorelli and Andrea Lonardi MW. It was first unveiled at Vinitaly in April this year. “It is about having the complete environmental mosaic,” Gorelli told db at a masterclass last week. “The vineyard, and the exposition, the origin of the geology and geomorphology - everything all together with high resolution data sources.” Weather mapping is one of the key areas and since 2019, the number of weather stations which are owned or shared with wineries, has increased across the appellation from 3 to 39, with a further 21 planned.  This creates a granular cross section of weather data from across the entire appellation, from precipitation to diurnal range, and thermal excursions across different altitudes and aspects which can be provide a more accurate picture of each vintage. According to Gorelli, it provides an “objective representation of the vintages and the planted areas” with year-round highlights including the lower and maximum temperature, heatwaves spikes and the impact these can have on the wines, as well as rainfall dates, “so you can see exactly how the vintage was”. This can indicate growing season highlights, including budburst, early flowering, heat and when the vines were under stress and the harvest, he added. The data is combined with chemical analysis of the wines and presented to a panel of international MWs for a tasting, which produces randomised word clouds to identify the most frequent traits in the wine and therefore provides a more accurate and nuanced way to talk about specific vintages than the previous star rating. “We want to be the ones with the highest amount of data, in order to give the highest information we can covey to the market,” he said. The Consorzio has already crunched the data for the 2021 vintage to create the maps, which will be compared to the ten previous vintages to see how this vintage fits in. This will go before the panel in the autumn’s tasting.