Ornellaia and Masseto were always treated as separate estates yet the unique qualities as well as the prominence that both have achieved in their own right always suggested that the iconic Masseto single vineyard needed to have its own winery that lived up to the wine’s reputation. Because it is true that we have recently decided to separate the Masseto vineyards from the Ornellaia parts as there is a beautiful new winery that we opened last year.” After many years of meticulous planning and construction, the subterranean Masseto winery, built directly into the famous blue clay that is part of the lore of the Masseto hill, was finished last year by architects ZITO+MORI. A much more restrained expression.Axel Heinz spoke about this transition into making a second wine, “I think this is something that reflects the evolution of this wine but not only being a vineyard wine but turning into a full estate. Heinz says that he wasn’t there so it’s difficult for him to comment, but he suspects they didn’t quite dare to go for it. Sous-bois, complex, harmonious and fresh, savory and classic. | 95Ī muted nose of undergrowth in a much less exuberant wine, more introspective. Slightly grainy tannins, rich, beautiful, dancing. Precise, tense, supple, silky, with nice grip. Herbs and undergrowth, chrysanthemums and almonds, and a sense of dancing. Concentrated and fresh: a sense of release from the travails of youth and an emergence into aromatic maturity. Savory herbs, rich, opulent, but bracing. Like a bath of chocolate sauce, enveloping and silky, with bracing cherries to stop it being cloying. Slightly phenolic finish, very long and elegant. Pine forest, garrigue, thyme, fennel, roses, and undergrowth, with the tannins smoothing out and the aromas emerging. Fresh herbs, fennel, garrigue, chocolate cherries very complex, coming around beautifully. Palate getting silky, and tannins smoothing out opulent, with a lively, almost bouncy texture. Concentrated, driven, powerful-like an SUV on a grouse moor. | 92īalsamic flavors, good acidity, with herbs and garrigue coming through. Food would absorb the tannins and release the aromas. Good freshness, powerful tannins definitely a Mediterranean wine. Silky cocoa and black cherries-spiced bottled cherries to be accurate-and black chocolate, dense. Flower aromas: roses around a solid door. | 90Ī rounder, more comfortable affair: leather notes, plums, all lush and opulent, with coffee and spice-cupboard notes tension, too, and a very concentrated center. There’s a slightly dry edge to the tannins. Finish is long, fresh, coffee-tinged, and grippy. Cinnamon, cardamom, plums, high acidity and tannins with a pronounced edge. Supple spice on the nose and a grippy edge to the palate. Very silky tannins and plenty of them, but they’re well tucked in. | 89įine-grained nose, and a taut, tight palate, fine and approachable. More marked by warmth there’s a certain chunkiness at the heart, under the elegance. It’s floral, with notes of roses, supple and silky, with herbs, a hint of strawberry to come good acidity backed by some chewy tannin. It’s a mini-me, sold at 35–37% of the price of Masseto, and containing 10–15% of Cabernet Franc. This is the estate’s second wine, of which the first vintage was 2017. Though I would hate to think that somebody could pinpoint when the new winery appeared.” “The new winery helps here, and I’m clear that if you can build a winery after you have experience of the wine, you have a clearer idea of what you want. That means less extraction, though not necessarily less maceration. “You have to be brave enough to get big rich fruit,” says Heinz, “but you have to stop in time to prevent it being overpowering and rustic.” Winemaking is about doing just enough to get optimum texture without rusticity. Now picking dates are more refined: “You normally have time to think about picking dates here, which is remarkable with Merlot, because it doesn’t normally give you much time.” The wine was a little chunkier before, a little less expressive. It was 2007 when he began to change the wine’s direction, point by point. Masseto is of course firmly in the luxury-goods bracket, and one of my favorite quotes of all time is from a Napa grower who told me many years ago that “you don’t mess with luxury goods.” Heinz has been messing with Masseto, but in the most delicate of ways he arrived in 2005 to make Masseto and Ornellaia, and his changes have been aimed at greater precision and less intervention. “Masseto is a good way of learning to handle wild ferments,” he says. He likes wild ferments, clearly he just doesn’t want chaos. His position is that winemaking is not accidental, and his job is to guide the process.
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