Ornellaia, Bolgheri Superiore 2020

One of the world's true Fine Wines.

From a warm and powerful vintage, this wine is full of ripe dark red fruits with a lacing of vanilla and tobacco on the nose, which leads to a round velvet-smooth, engaging and immensely enjoyable palate. A long, long and intense finish with stunning texture and a fruit-focused yet savoury flavour spectrum - a genuinely rewarding and eye-opening experience.

Taken from the best parcels of their vineyards, the wine is made of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 13% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot. The grapes are fermented parcel by parcel and grape by grape in stainless steel and concrete vats, like Le Serre Nuove, before being moved to oak barrels for malo-lactic fermentation and ageing in 70% new and 30% first-year barrels. The wines are then aged for 12 months before being blended with each other and then returned to barriques for an additional 6 months prior to bottling. Once bottled each vintage rests for another 12 months before being released to market. 

Established in 1981 the rise of Ornellaia to its pedestal of greatness has been remarkably rapid. Few other projects have gained such rapid ascent, yet it's clear that the realisation of what potential lay in these soils was a matter of when and by whom, rather than if ever at all.  This estate is set in the coast of Tuscany set in the pebbly soils next to the village of Bolgheri and is now one of the most highly-prized and respected wine regions in the world. Famed for excellent climatic and soil conditions with a superb selection of vines, there might be a sense that wines from the Bolgheri DOC can make themselves. Though this is partly true, the realisation of the stellar quality that this particular estate produces was planned to the minutest of detail by the estate's owners and founders, the Frescobaldi family, who have been growing vines and making wine in Tuscany for over 700 years.

There's always a load of thought and writing about Fine Wine. I do enjoy reading it and wondering what some of these things might be like to actually consume; but I'm also often concerned that trying to sell them represents a hugely irrelevant struggle. These wines can be so astronomically priced that to approach them is, to many, impossible. Step-forward-second-wines, so. And yes, the second wine for Ornellaia (the superb Le Serre Nuove dell'Ornellaia) is absolutely brilliant, and gives more than a glimpse of the estate and is far more convincing in its own right than some ersatz Tuscans can achieve. But I'll say this about Ornellaia: if you do get the chance to try this, or find someone who'll go halves, or open a present, or just afford it once - you really will enjoy it. I'd reckon more so than Lynch. Or some of the others. It really is that good - this is generosity from the winemaker, the land and the climate - it's a very rewarding special wine, required naff-all in the way of expertise in order to be able to say "that's really worth it".