RE: From Stars to Words: How Brunello FORMA Is Redefining Vintage Evaluations

Keith Mattrick — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 19:54:24 GMT

This was a really fascinating article! Superb at conveying a wide variety of viewpoints on a rather exciting development on how to present and contextualize a vintage.

A few things I would have been more curious to learn about.

The way the word was presented in all-caps I thought ‘Forma’ might be an initialism or acronym of some sort, which made me curious of what it might be a shortening of. But looking at how the Consorzio presents it, all-caps are not used as it appears to be using the Italian word ‘forma’ as it is presenting the shape/fit/structural outline of a particular vintage. If that etylomogy/background was present in the article, I missed it, but I think it is helpful to highlight for folks like me who are not well-versed in Italian.
A criticism of the previous system was that the sensory analysis of the tasting panel was held too soon after harvest to provide a meaningful evaluation of the wines, but I wasn’t clear when the MW evaluation presented in the article took place specifically or in general when those evaluatory tasting panels take place under the new system versus the old system. Apologies if I missed it, but that was something I was curious about as well.
I’m sure to dive into it on my own, as this article has really sparked my interest. but is it typical to base evaluations of a vintage on bottles that are submissions chosen by the producers? The sample wouldn’t be expected to be representative of the underlying population and thus any assessments wouldn’t have much applicability beyond the 57 wines that were submitted.

Regardless, really exciting developments in the world of Brunello - thanks for getting me excited to dive into this!

RE: From Stars to Words: How Brunello FORMA Is Redefining Vintage Evaluations

Evan Davis CWE — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 12:40:06 GMT

Great article Jessica! This is a fascinating development. The stars, like wine scores attempted to distill something complex into an easily digestible reference. But they always lacked context, this seems to be a step forward in pushing people interested in these wines to think a bit deeper about the region of Montalcino. Very cool to see!