Montalcino has always been a place to conquer, ever since the age of struggles among Siena versus Firenze or Arezzo, or the Crusades, when even the pilgrims passed by the Francigena way and entered the local hostarias. Nowadays, those who know Montalcino want to conquer it trying to know that land as much as possible as well as its fruits: the well known DOCG Brunello wine rather than the DOC “Rosso” or the “Sant’Antimo” wine or a good Vinsanto to get one’s mouth sweeter.
The tourist (Italian or foreigner) want to reach Montalcino for renowned tastings but even because that village wrapped at the hill represents a happy island: a place where you can escape from jam, frenesy of daily life and all other platitudes.
Montalcino is everything but a “platitude”, it is unique, it is characteristic, it is inviting for its urban structure and for the Castle that evokes far ages. Thus, nowadays, the best image of Montalcino reveals itself by the most precious gift: the wine.
Whoever is responsible for giving birth and granting quality and prestige during the ages to such a famous product by a hard job but to the father of Brunello? The son of Ferruccio Biondi Santi, Tancredi, made the vine typical and threw the basis for the future disciplinary. His father did not do anything but detect and select the Brunello wine, that is the one coming from Sangiovese Grosso, the gentle clone at its turn of the vine Sangiovese from Chianti.
He was the “parent” and he is the one to whom we attribute the invention of Brunello still nowadays. His nephew Franco Biondi Santi maybe still preserves the first bottles produced by his grand-father  dated of 1888. The Brunello is the sole wine in Toscana (or one of the very few, surely counted by the fingers of one hand) not to be afraid of the aging, nay, the more it gets aged the more it achieves prestige and strength. 
The bottle in the cellar should be placed in a horizontal position. To drink that wine you would better place it back in vertical position and let it stay that way up to a whole week for the most aged vintages, then bringing it to the suitable temperature to drink (2 or 3 days more). 
All the processes will have to be developed slowly and gradually. If the wine is young (10-15 years aged) the bottle has to be uncorked in the previous 12 hours and throw away the wine up to half of its shoulder. The older is the wine the minor will be the necessary time to uncork the bottle before drinking it. The glass will be a “balloon” with the same shape as the Cognac’s but smaller and thin and with a higher stem.
The wine production here has always been faithful to the rules stated generally for Tuscan wine. 
Only for the end of the last century you have started the first experimentations to exalt and give value to the features of unique prime matter and environment. 
Thus the Brunello bears out again, and after ages of maturation and refinement in the barrel it shows off as renewed to public tasters.
The border lines of the production area match the ones of the Commune of Montalcino. The local farms offer pleasant and interesting oeno-touristic trips. 
The Commune of Montalcino lays at 40 km southbound far from Siena towards Roma. The land is bordered by the Orcia, Asso and Ombrone valleys, taking a round shape with a diameter of 16 km and a surface of 24.000 hectares. 
The Brunello from Montalcino, it has been said and it is stated again, is a wine coming from tilling, fermentation and refinement of grapes from “Sangiovese Grosso” vine (commonly called “Brunello grape in Montalcino), clearly light, brilliant and with a vivacious garnet red colour. 
In the Post World War period, as the vine plague: the Phylloxera spreaded over Italy, many local vines have gone lost and in order to save what could be saved, there where the vine is delicate and risks to fall ill, some set of roots have been introduced in the Italian market among American understocks untouchable by the above mentioned “grapevine plague”.
All that has not compromised neither the quality or the regality of the superb vine from Montalcino, nay, the fact you took those countermeasures has made that wine to be tasted and enjoyed up to nowadays. 
It has an intense perfume, persistent, wide and ethereous; you can recognize smells of underwood, aromatic wood and a light vanilla.