2005 Castelgiocondo (Marchesi de' Frescobaldi) Lamaione Toscana IGT

Community Tasting Notes (20) Avg Score: 91.8 points

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  6/21/2022 - Lyubomir Lefterov Likes this wine: 93 Points

  My last one of 6. Decanted and consumed over the next 4 hrs, kept improving all the way. In the first hour was full bodied with luscious dark fruits and noticeable oak support- balanced but a bit heavy. Went through various stages, there was a savory crunchy red berries period, there was a funky/barnyard period and with the last glass came truffles. Fantastic wine, give it a good decanting, the Montalcino terroir became evident after 2 hrs in the decanter. Enjoyed with pecorino toscano and truffle salami.

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  7/12/2020 - Lyubomir Lefterov Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Decanted for an hour. So smooth and velvety, poised with succulent red fruit. Balanced and pure - plenty of life ahead.

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  11/20/2018 - Lyubomir Lefterov Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Fresh, vibrant, mouth watering with mineral undertones and beautiful completeness. Merlot, but Montalcino terroir is shining through. In excellent condition for drinking now, but will keep for a decade.

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  2/22/2017 - larsum Likes this wine: 92 Points

  Had it with an assortment of prosciutto crudo, salami and Gruyère cheese. Directly out of the bottle sweet, an hour or so airing brought barnyard notes on the nose, together with meat and some spices. On the palate almost fully developed with barnyard, again, spices and hints of smoke. Long aftertaste. It would have been difficult not to call this Pomerol in a blind-testing. This was my last -05. Lucky for me I have -06s left.

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  9/15/2016 - forceberry wrote: 92 Points

  Macerated for 4 weeks on the skins. Aged for 24 months in French barriques (90% new, 10% second use). 14% alcohol.
  
  Slightly translucent black cherry color with a developed maroon hue towards the rim. Very powerful, concentrated and somewhat developed nose with pronounced cassis tones and ripe, sweet-toned aromas of blackberry jam, some toasty oak spice, a little bit of minty green character and a developed hint of leather. The wine is full-bodied, concentrated and powerful on the palate with moderately noticeable alcohol warmth and quite savory flavors of ripe dark berries, meaty umami, toasty oak spice, some blackcurrant jam tones, a little bit of extracted woody bitterness, light developed notes of leather, an aged hint of pruney dark fruit and a touch of peppery spice. The wine is moderately high in acidity, but most of the structure relies on the very firm and assertive wall of tannins that coat your mouth and keep the sweeter-toned flavors well in check. The finish is quite warm, very grippy and rather lengthy with savory flavors of ripe blackcurrants, prunes, some peppery spice, a little bit of savory oak spice, a little bit of sour cherry bitterness and a hint of developed, earthy and slightly leathery character.
  
  A massive blockbuster of a wine that shares very little with those typically soft, sweet-toned and supple wines normally produced with Merlot grapes. Even at 11 years of age the wine shows very little resolution and although the fruit flavors start to exhibit some tertiary characteristics, the wine is still dominated by very assertive, unyielding tannins. Stylistically the wine is still a bit too blackcurrant-and-oak-dominant for my taste, but it is a very impressive effort all the same. Most likely will continue to develop for years to come and I can imagine my score will go up as the wine ages (and hopefully the oak integrates better with the extracted fruit). A very modern take on Tuscan Merlot, but an impressive wine for one.

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