It's rare that a winery visit begins and ends with a stroll around a garden planted almost entirely with white flowers. It felt a little like a scene from The Godfather, with Gianfranco Soldera, the Grand Old Man of Brunello di Montalcino, leading me around his verges, poking a pair of scissors into the gigantic petunias and clematis while holding in one hand a clump of crumbling, slate-like stone called galestro — the critical ingredient in the terroir of perhaps the greatest Brunello currently being made. Under chestnut blossoms falling like dry snow, the tiny, hunched septuagenarian shrugged when I mentioned any of the famous Brunellos that American millionaires lust for and for which they pay absurd amounts of loot.

After each gesture of dismissal, Soldera muttered "Beh, è un altro mondo." He wouldn't actually say outright that he thought Banfi's and Antinori's offerings were phony, but it was enough to say that they belonged to "another world."

So they do. I've never much seen the appeal of most of these over-hyped wines. They're too intense, too dark, too extracted. And too expensive. Drinking a "top" modern Brunello has always seemed to me like drinking a "top" modern Rioja: just so much over-bright, eager-to-please sameness. Whereas an old Rioja like López de Heredia and a traditional Brunello like Soldera are utterly different from each other — and equally inspiring. Wine Spectator often praises Brunello for its "blackberry and chocolate fruit" and "lightly toasted oak." It's surprising that no one in this corner of Tuscany has bothered to make ice cream out of it.

"Most of what is called Brunello is nothing of the sort," Soldera went on. "It's a hype machine. Anyway, I don't make wines for idiots. I don't care. The ones who know come to me." It was a high-handed statement, said, curiously, without any arrogance whatsoever. He looked up at the little sea of frothing spring flowers around us. "By the way, I am trying to bring in the insects with this garden. My vineyards are so close that cross-fertilizations are going on all the time. You see, nature is stronger than man." Più bravo. "I see myself as the humble orchestrator of nature herself." In his blue cap and dandy polka-dot cravat, Soldera looked more like a theater impresario who had wandered into an agricultural stint.

I happened to visit Soldera last spring, just a few weeks after a major Brunello scandal — known variously as Brunellogate and Brunellopoli — broke into the world press, making it even as far as the Drudge Report. A public prosecutor in nearby Siena, Nino Calabrese, had initiated an investigation into the practices of 13 of Montalcino's producers, including some of its best-known ones. Apparently, these producers tried to compensate for the dry, difficult vintage of 2003 (released in 2007) by cutting some corners — namely, spiking their bottlings with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot. Italy's strict Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita, or DOCG, laws stipulate that Brunello di Montalcino should be made with 100 percent Sangiovese — the varietal that has dominated local production since the august house of Biondi Santi began producing wine with a Sangiovese clone called Brunello in the 1880s.