Tenuta Dell’ Ornellaia - A Superb Tuscan
The town of Bolgheri sits just 60 miles southwest of the famous Tuscany city of Florence, in the province of Livorno. It’s an old town with roots going back to 700 A.D., and although it’s seen its fair share of ups and downs, like being completely razed to the ground at various times by German invaders, once by Maximillian I’s troops in 1496 and again in the Nazi retreat from Italy in the last of WW II, it’s now a tourist’s retreat nestled along the beautiful Etruscan coast of Italy. Stately villa’s, a medieval town square surrounded by the large red-bricked Castle Bolgheri, re-built in the early 18th century and the famous Viale die Cipressi (miles of roads flanked by Cypress trees, made famous in a poem by Giosue Carducci) all add to it’s old world charm and Mediterranean appeal.
Just south of the town of Bolgheri, is an expansive winery founded in 1981 called Tenuta Dell’Ornellaia. Started with the mission to produce only outstanding wines using exceptional terroirs, they have reached international acclaim and countless awards. The flagship wine called simply Ornellaia was first produced in 1985, from an extremely careful selection of the vineyards grown on the Estate. It’s produced in limited quantities, handcrafted and vinified with the utmost care and attention to detail.
The blend is known as a Super Tuscan, a mixture of Bordeaux varietals that do not originate in Tuscany. The typical cuvee in the Ornellaia is predominately Cabernet Sauvignon, followed by a lesser amount of Merlot, Cab Franc and finally Petit Verdot. 28 different vineyards, spanning over 474 acres of vastly different soils and microclimates allow for the perfect soil and climate to be matched with the correct varietal. Split between two different locations, one southwest of Bohlgeri and one northeast of Bohlgheri are where you can find these vineyards. The landscape is one that from the warm low lying flatlands you can almost taste the ocean’s salty spray, and from the slightly cooler, hilly and higher elevated spots you can see the ocean and nearby islands of Capria and Gorgona. The vineyards are almost evenly divided amongst young high-density low-lying vineyards such as Sondraje and Olivio that are tightly packed together to actually reduce the yield of each vine. The varietals that do best in this sunny and warm type of environment are Cabernet and Merlot, with a smaller amount of Cab Franc and Petit Verdot. The other half of the vineyards are planted primarily on rootstock that average 25 years or more, and taking advantage of more calcaneous, stone and clay driven soils, and cooler climates. These vineyards have various amounts of all the varietals’, Merlot, Cab Franc, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Harvest must be a logistical nightmare, because using electric powered carts, each individual vineyard and sometimes blocks within each vineyard is hand picked in whole bunch clusters, then kept separate, picked over once again through individual berry table sorting, and then again placed separately in barriques of 70% new oak and 30% once used oak, brought to malolactic fermentation and then aged for 12 months in the same barrique. At the 12-month mark the wines are tasted for various points of quality, flavors, and terroir components then blended together, but put back into barrique again aged for 6 more months prior to bottling. At 18 months, the wine is then transferred to bottle where it again ages for another year before being released.
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