a fine wine tasting archive
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Ornellaia is a red-wine name. Its first commercial white, the 2013 Bianco, was four thousand bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier made without malolactic and left on the lees for a year and a half. Thirteen years on, the acidity that decision protected was still cutting straight through the fruit.
The estate that made its name refusing Sangiovese puts it in the entry wine. 2017 was a drought year, and small berries left their mark on everything Tuscany bottled.
Tua Rita is famous for a Merlot that costs more than most Bordeaux. This is the estate's other face — the coast's own white grape, made in steel, opened late on a January night with no ceremony at all.
A month earlier the same wine had been drunk in its most difficult year. This was the other one — the hot, dry summer the Galatrona vineyard was planted for. A half bottle, at the end of a long evening.
An April frost cost Fontodi a large part of the 2017 crop, and then the summer turned hot and dry. Giovanni Manetti has argued that the first disaster is what protected the estate from the second. Opened half an hour after a Côte-Rôtie, on the same table.
In Tuscany's 2014, it rained for twenty-one days in July and Merlot was the variety that suffered most. Galatrona is one hundred percent Merlot. Six years later it was leaner than usual, and better for it.
2014 was the vintage several of Montalcino's most famous estates refused to bottle at all. Banfi made one — and at six years old, opened at home with a delivered pizza, it made a quiet case for the year.