2004 Vinsanto

My visit to Antinori's Tignanello property in Chianti Classico provided an object lesson in the challenges of understanding the complexities and nuances of Tuscan terroir, something which can be extrapolated to many other regions within Italy as well. I saw vineyards where the two major terrains in these hills, galestro and alberese, alternated in groups of three to four rows within the same plot. As a result, the plants themselves were at slightly different points in their vegetative cycles. Back in the winery, oenologist Renzo Cotarella prepared a comprehensive tasting of Antinori's two flagship wines, Tignanello and Solaia, with vintages going back to the mid-1990s. I will report on those verticals, which include a preview of 2006 and 2007, in an upcoming article that will be published on this site. Both Tignanello and Solaia are outstanding in 2005. Readers may recall my enthusiasm over the 2004s. Of course the vintage was exceptional, but it is no accident that those wines were so successful. 2004 was the first vintage in which the lots for these wines were aged separately, with the final blend taking place at the end of the aging period, whereas previously the blend had been assembled just after the completion of malolactic fermentation. Given that wines develop and age in ways that sometimes surprise even the most experiences winemakers, waiting until the wines have had a chance to spend some time in barrel leaves the producer with much more certainty as to the quality and consistency of the final wine. In a difficult vintage such as 2005 the selection of lots prior to assembling and bottling was therefore especially critical.