Masseto Tasting
Eight vintages of Ornellaia's pure Merlot show why it's one of Italy's greatest wines
By Jo Cooke
Tenuta dell'Ornellaia's pure Merlot, Masseto, has probably attracted more attention than any other Tuscan, or even any Italian, wine in recent years. Grown in just more than 16 acres of vineyards in the coastal area of Bolgheri, Masseto has been variously described as Italy's top Merlot and as Pomerol's long-lost twin. The 2001 Masseto, which received a perfect 100-point score in Wine Spectator blind tastings, was declared by Jean-François Moueix, owner of Pomerol icon Château Pétrus, to be the greatest young Merlot he had ever tasted.
What's behind the buzz over this wine that first appeared 20 years ago? That's what the attendees of the Masseto vertical tasting came to find out. A show of hands at the start of the seminar demonstrated that only a few people in the room were acquainted with Masseto.
On the stage was Lamberto Frescobaldi, whose family became sole owners of Ornellaia last April; the Frescobaldis and California's Robert Mondavi Corp. had taken over the estate from Lodovico Antinori in 2002 in a 50/50 venture. With Frescobaldi was Ornellaia technical director Leonardo Raspini.
Moderator James Suckling, who as Wine Spectator's European bureau chief has lived in Tuscany since 1998, said that winemaking in the area of Bolgheri had seen rapid growth since he first visited it in 1987. "At that time," he said, "there were some nice beaches, but not much winemaking going on at all, apart from Sassicaia and a rosé wine from Antinori."
Since Ornellaia was founded by Lodovico Antinori, numerous people from around the world have helped to shape the estate. The late André Tchelistcheff, the famed winemaker who guided California's Beaulieu Vineyard to glory, was Ornellaia's first consultant. Bordeaux enologist Michel Rolland has been overseeing the estate's winemaking since the early 1990s. And New Zealand viticulturist Danny Schuster worked to define vineyard techniques at Ornellaia in the mid-1990s, preparing the way for the excellent quality wines that followed.
Eight Massetos, from 1995 to 2002, were on show, and the majority of them received a rating of "classic" (95 to 100 points on Wine Spectator's 100-point scale) on release. Although the tasting reconfirmed the wines' original scores, the panel focused on explaining the various climatic variables that gave each vintage its particular quality. "Wines must reflect the season in which they were born," said Frescobaldi. "If they are the same every year, it just becomes boring."
For example, while tasting the 1995 Masseto (95 points on release), the panelists attributed the slight hint of dilution to rains during the harvest. The 2002 (90) came from a very rainy season in Tuscany-although coastal areas such as Bolgheri were not as badly affected as others-and the wine showed slightly less complex character than the other vintages. The 2000 (91) expressed the influence of the extremely hot summer of 2000 with its very ripe fruit character, while the Masseto 1996 (95), from a slightly cooler year, showed a rather harder edge, with tougher tannins.
In Tuscany as a whole, 1997 was one of the best vintages ever. But Bolgheri has its own microclimate, Suckling explained, and the 1998 Masseto (97) had a slight edge over the 1997 (96) vintage, offering elegance and class against the more powerful, concentrated force of its predecessor. The 1999 (96), a big, rich and chewy wine on release, showed the same power this time around but, according to Suckling, had a coarser mouthfeel than the 1998.
Raspini explained that this string of great Massetos was possible because of the work that had been done in the vineyards and the winery in the preceding years. "We had a better knowledge of our vineyards-when to harvest and when not to-and had refined our techniques in the winery," he said. "Naturally, this is a process that is still continuing."
The pearl of the tasting was undoubtedly the 100-point 2001 Masseto (priced at $250 on release), which Frescobaldi described as "a natural gift." The summer was very hot, he explained, but cool weather arrived just at the end of the growing season. "Those who picked their Merlot before the cool weather tended to make jammy wines," he said, "but those, like Ornellaia, who waited got the benefit of the ripe fruit from a hot summer and the structure that was induced by the cool weather."
While the tasting illustrated the ups and downs of each vintage, Frescobaldi said, "The problems that arise during any vintage can give something extra to the wine-something we have to find. So we shouldn't just drink wines. We should explore them, and then we can enjoy them more."
