Brunello Vintage Chart: Every Year 2000 to 2024
Brunello di Montalcino vintage chart with a rating, a drink or hold verdict, and a drinking window for all 25 vintages from 2000 to 2024. Free, no sign-up.
Grapes
Sangiovese (Sangiovese Grosso)
Typical window
6 to 25 years from vintage, longer in the strongest years
Ready now
16 of 25 vintages
Still holding
5 vintages
Brunello di Montalcino vintage chart
Sommo drinking-window engine · updated July 2026| Vintage | Rating | Verdict | Drinking window | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | ★★★☆☆ | hold | 2029 to 2040 | A variable season with a cooler middle stretch suggests medium-bodied, fresher wines, but it is too soon to judge the vintage properly. |
| 2023 | ★★★☆☆ | hold | 2028 to 2038 | A wet spring with strong mildew pressure cut volumes and produced uneven results, so this looks like a vintage for careful choosing. |
| 2022 | ★★★☆☆ | hold | 2028 to 2038 | Severe drought and repeated heat spikes gave dark, powerful, high-alcohol wines whose balance depends heavily on the site. |
| 2021 | ★★★★☆ | hold | 2027 to 2044 | A dry year with cool nights made concentrated, firmly tannic wines with good freshness that are still knitting together. |
| 2020 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2025 to 2038 | A warm, dry, straightforward season gave polished, fruit-forward wines with softer tannins that drink well from release. |
| 2019 | ★★★★★ | hold | 2027 to 2048 | A cool spring and a warm, dry late summer produced beautifully balanced wines with depth and tension that are still tightening up. |
| 2018 | ★★☆☆☆ | drink | 2023 to 2030 | A wet, cool year with heavy disease pressure made pale, light, early-maturing wines, with quality resting entirely on selection. |
| 2017 | ★★☆☆☆ | drink | 2022 to 2030 | Frost, drought and extreme heat cut yields sharply and gave dry, alcoholic, tannic wines that need drinking rather than cellaring. |
| 2016 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2024 to 2046 | A near-ideal season with a cool September gave wines that combine ripeness with lifted aromatics and firm acidity, the complete package. |
| 2015 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2022 to 2042 | A warm, dry season with a mild finish made ripe, opulent, thickly textured wines that were approachable early and still have years to run. |
| 2014 | ★☆☆☆☆ | drink | 2019 to 2027 | A cold, soaking summer produced dilute, herbal wines and many estates declassified everything, so what exists should be drunk immediately. |
| 2013 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2020 to 2036 | A cool, late season gave high-acid, red-fruited, classically shaped wines with real elegance that are only now hitting their stride. |
| 2012 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2018 to 2030 | Drought and summer heat shrank the crop and produced concentrated, chewy wines that vary a good deal from site to site. |
| 2011 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2017 to 2029 | An intensely hot August pushed alcohol high and acidity low, giving rich, broad wines that are generous but short on tension. |
| 2010 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2018 to 2040 | A cool, late season with a long dry finish produced the benchmark of the decade, fragrant and firmly structured with a very long life ahead. |
| 2009 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2014 to 2027 | Heat spikes during ripening made uneven, forward, soft-edged wines that reached maturity early and should be opened soon. |
| 2008 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2014 to 2028 | A cool summer with September rain gave medium-bodied, fresh, sometimes lean wines that are drinking well and will not improve further. |
| 2007 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2013 to 2028 | An early, warm season produced plush, sweetly fruited, immediately charming wines that are best enjoyed before their fruit recedes. |
| 2006 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2014 to 2036 | A warm summer with cool nights and a dry harvest gave powerful, tannic, deeply colored wines that took a decade to soften and are superb now. |
| 2005 | ★★☆☆☆ | past | 2010 to 2023 | A damp, cool autumn forced compromises at harvest, and the resulting light, lean wines were always meant for early drinking. |
| 2004 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2011 to 2032 | A long, temperate season with a dry autumn made classically structured, aromatic wines with the acidity to carry them for decades. |
| 2003 | ★★☆☆☆ | past | 2008 to 2020 | The heatwave scorched fruit and shut the vines down, giving jammy, low-acid wines with hard tannins that faded quickly. |
| 2002 | ★☆☆☆☆ | past | 2007 to 2012 | Constant rain and rot through the late summer wrecked the crop, and most of the best estates declined to bottle a Brunello at all. |
| 2001 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2008 to 2028 | A balanced season with a cool August produced firm, savory, well-proportioned wines that have aged gracefully and are at their peak. |
| 2000 | ★★★☆☆ | past | 2006 to 2022 | A very warm, dry summer gave ripe, soft, low-acid wines that showed well early and have now largely dried out. |
Ratings are Sommo's own reading of the vintage, on a five-point scale. Verdicts come from the same drinking-window engine the app runs on a bottle you scan, so a chart here and a bottle in your cellar are judged the same way. 4 of these vintages are past their best by our reckoning, which is the column most charts quietly leave out.
Brunello is one hundred percent Sangiovese from a single Tuscan hill, and it cannot be released until the fifth year after the harvest. That long mandated wait does two things to a vintage chart: it means the youngest wines on the shelf are already several years old, and it means a weak year has had time to shed whatever fruit it had.
Montalcino is also more varied than its size suggests. The warmer, lower south ripens earlier and suffers first in a drought; the cooler north holds acidity in a hot year. A vintage that reads as average across the appellation was often excellent on one side of the hill.
Common questions
Rarely before its tenth year, and the best vintages keep going for twenty five or more. The mandated release in year five is the earliest it may be sold, not the point at which it is ready. If you are opening one young, decant it for a couple of hours.
Same grape, same hill, shorter aging requirement. Rosso is released far earlier and is designed to be drunk young, often from younger vines or from lots the producer judged not quite Brunello. In a weaker vintage, more of the crop goes into Rosso, which is why a modest year can produce very good Rosso.
Not automatically. Sangiovese in a very hot, dry year can give jammy fruit and hard, cooked tannin, and Montalcino's warmer southern sector suffers first. The best years combine enough warmth to ripen the tannin with enough water and cool nights to keep the acidity that makes Sangiovese taste like itself.
Brunello ages longer, by roughly a decade at the top end, because it must be all Sangiovese and spends far longer in cask before release. Chianti Classico permits other varieties and shorter aging, which makes it more approachable early but generally shorter lived.
They are Sommo's own reading of each vintage, on a five-point scale, and the verdicts come from the same drinking-window logic the app applies to a bottle you scan. They are not aggregated critic scores.