If the sentence you have just read in the title somehow reminds you of The Lord of the Rings, then you are on the right track. But let’s start from the beginning.
On November 14 Wine Spectator’s decreed that the Brunello di Montalcino Riserva 2016 of Fattoria dei Barbi is in second place among the best wines of 2022, a wonderful achievement for the company, the reason why my father and I, already present in Montalcino to participate in Benvenuto Brunello (an event in which, given the vast quantity of wines, we were masterfully guided by the group of Vinodabere, already there for a day and quite experienced) thought of Stefano Cinelli Colombini to hear a “hot comment” on this great second place.
The plan was perfect: arrive, have lunch at the Taverna dei Barbi (a location where they are capable of “showing off” cheeses capable of causing addiction), talk a bit with Stefano, ask him some questions about young people, in front of the camera, and then return to Rome.
Too bad that I had not considered two things: the already previously mentioned goodness of the cheeses, which caused in everyone a sense of beatitude and satisfaction such as to enormously increase the perceived gravity, to the point of keeping us anchored to the chair, and the warmth of Stefano’s hospitality. The latter, combined with an incredibly vast general culture, was capable of throwing me and my family into a state of conscious semi-hypnosis given the dynamism of the topics and the variety of the topics.
And do you know what the funny thing is?
We did not talk “only” about wine, but “also” about wine, which is why today I am not writing about the wines or about the second place of “Fattoria dei Barbi”, but rather about the man who is Stefano Cinelli Colombini.
A warm, easy-going man with an incredible culture, who, as you may have already seen in another interview on wwining.it, when a question was asked regarding the incredible result of this year on Wine Spectator preferred to give credit and highlight his territory, showing a great love for it.
An extremely straightforward man who although a producer from Montalcino did not have problems admitting that according to him one of the possibilities that could bring young people closer to wine could be given by the “immediacy” of bubbles.
A man who undeniably loves and believes in his territory, knowing how to bring out the best from it.
Ah yes! Regarding the origin of the title… those words were the words of Stefano referring to the ideal wine that according to him was needed to attract young people towards this world of wine (yes I know that I speak as if I were no longer young and had already lived my life, but deep down I am a bit old inside). In short, hearing Stefano say that with young people a wine was needed to capture them and attract them, as a good nerd I had to start declaiming Tolkien, beginning to recite (badl
