The Buyer | Conti Marone Cinzano’s new Lot 1 and the pursuit of perfection

Brunello di Montalcino has assumed a dramatically more youthful personality with the launch by Santiago Marone Cinzano of his high-end Lot 1 range. The first wine in the range, the 2019 launched last year, has just been joined with the release of the second vintage from 2020. Not cheap at around £250 a bottle retail, both wines drew appreciative comments from a chatty lunch at the Trullo restaurant in North London. But a sharp divide in opinion soon opened up. Are you a 2020er, swinging behind this sensual and voluptuous wine? Or are you a 2019er, loving the complex and formally structured older vintage? No room for fence-sitting, as Victor Smart reports.