2003 Masseto

This wine was tasted as part of a complete retrospective I co-hosted with Masseto winemaker Axel Heinz, singer/songwriter Martina McBride and her husband, producer John McBride that was auctioned off at the Nashville Wine Auction to fund cancer research and treatment.

First made in 1986 as Il Merlot dell’Ornellaia, Masseto has gone on to become one of the most highly sought-after wines in the world. Masseto emerges principally from three Merlot vineyards: ‘Masseto Alto, Masseto Centrale and Masseto Junior.’ The wine sees 3-4 weeks on the skins, followed by malolactic fermentation in barrel. The lots are aged separately for 12 months in 100% new oak, blended and then the wine is aged for another 12 months in wood. Earlier vintages saw shorter macerations and less time in oak, broadly speaking. Production is around 32,000 bottles. Readers who want to learn more about the history of Masseto might enjoy this article from some years back.

This wine was tasted over dinner at the Masseto Vertical at A Voce Columbus, New York, in March 2012.

Over the years Tenuta dell'Ornellaia's Masseto has earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the world's great wines. As it turns out, Masseto's existence is quite accidental. When Lodovico Antinori and Tibor Gal first developed Tenuta dell'Ornellaia in the early 1980s, their goal was to create an estate wine that could stand on its own terms next to Sassicaia, Bolgheri's established superstar. Sassicaia is 100% Cabernet, so Antinori and Gal decided that Ornellaia would have a significant percentage of Merlot, which would help differentiate their wine. Out of curiosity and armed with a hunch they had a superior site, in 1986 Antinori and Gal bottled their first pure Merlot, Il Merlot dell'Ornellaia, as an experiment. Though not commercially released, the wine was a huge success and paved the way for the 100% Merlot Masseto, which was first released with the following vintage. One of the little-known consequences (and ironies) of the success of Masseto is that Ornellaia remained a much more heavily Cabernet Sauvignon-based wine than originally conceived. Masseto is made from as many as three vineyards, although in challenging years not all of the parcels make it into the final blend. Masseto Centrale is the original Merlot vineyard on the estate. It was planted in 1984. Masseto Centrale is further divided into two sub-parcels, Sinistro (left) and Destro (right) which are often picked and vinified separately. Masseto Alto lies just up the hill from Masseto Centrale. The ocean views from this higher-altitude site are quite striking and serve as a poignant reminder as to the origins of the Tuscan Maremma. Masseto Junior is the youngest Merlot vineyard and was planted in 1999. The harvest generally takes place from early to mid-September. Each of the parcels is harvested, vinified and aged separately. Fermentation and maceration has been around 25-30 days in recent years. Masseto is aged for 24 months in new French oak barrels. Typically the blend of sub-parcels takes place after the first twelve months of aging. The final, blended wine is returned to barrel for a subsequent twelve months before it is prepared for bottling. During the 1980s the estate experimented with shorter aging regimes, notable with the 1989 and 1990, which spent 11 and 14 months respectively in oak. Beginning with the 1991, all vintages have spent two years in barrel.

Tenuta dell'Ornellaia is without question one of Italy's blue-chip properties. The gorgeous, sprawling estate is located in Bolgheri in Tuscany's Maremma. On a recent visit I had the opportunity to taste a number of the estate's wines with General Manager/Agronomist Leonardo Raspini and Oenologist Axel Heinz, including verticals of the estate's top bottlings Ornellaia and Masseto. The 100% Merlot Masseto, on the other hand, has proven to be a wine of greater singularity. Its unique, unmistakable personality always comes through, especially in a set of widely diverse vintages, as this vertical attests. The Masseto vineyard measures roughly 7 hectares. Set on a gently sloping hill, the vineyard is divided into three sections which contain different clay-based soil types. The structure of Masseto comes from the central portion of the vineyard (Masseto Centrale), where the terrain is most compact. Towards the upper part of the hillside (Masseto Alto) the soils contain a higher percentage of rocks and thus yield wines that are more aromatic. The lower stretch of the vineyard, known as “Masseto Junior,” is also the most recent to be planted. According to Raspini the fruit from these vines bridges the qualities of the wines from the central and upper portions of the vineyard and thus serves to give Masseto its finesse and balance. There is also a small amount of fruit that comes from the “Vigna Vecchia” plot which is the source of the Merlot that is used for Ornellaia. Each parcel is harvested and vinified separately. Fermentation and maceration typically last around 25 days, give or take, depending on the quality of the fruit, after which the wines are moved into 100% new French oak barrels for the malolactic fermentations. The wines spend 12 months in oak prior to being assembled, after which the final blend spends an additional 12 months in oak prior to being bottled. “2003 was of course a very hot vintage. Other than leaving as much leaf cover as possible there wasn't much we could do. It was an exceedingly dry summer although we did get a little rain in mid- September which helped the later-ripening Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Unfortunately the Merlot was too far along in its maturation for the rain to have any effect. Because we had better results with our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in 2003, Ornellaia contains a higher percentage of those varietals. It was an even more challenging vintage for Merlot. For our Masseto we were only able to use the oldest, central part of the vineyard. That said, the vines held up well and our harvest was only a week or so earlier than normal. Relative to other vintages the polyphenol readings were lower than usual so we did slightly longer fermentations to try to extract as much as possible from the fruit. Our overall production was down about 30%.”

“Our last three vintages could not have been more different,” explains General Manager/Agronomist Leonardo Raspini. “For us 2004 was a terrific vintage, one that combines very high quality with quantity. It may sound hard to believe but here those two go hand in hand. The weather throughout the summer and into the fall was very stable which allowed us to pick each parcel at the optimum level of ripeness. We are happy with all of our wins, from top to bottom.” “2003 was of course a very hot vintage. Other than leaving as much leaf cover as possible there wasn't much we could do. It was an exceedingly dry summer although we did get a little rain in mid-September which helped the later-ripening Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Unfortunately the Merlot was too far along in its maturation for the rain to have any effect. Because we had better results with our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in 2003 Ornellaia contains a higher percentage of those varietals. It was an even more challenging vintage for Merlot. For our Massseto we were only able to use the oldest, central part of the vineyard. That said, the vines held up well and our harvest was only a week or so earlier than normal. Relative to other vintages the polyphenol readings were lower than usual so we did slightly longer fermentations to try to extract as a much as possible from the fruit. Our overall production was down about 30%.” “Vintage 2002 was a different story altogether. The summer, especially August, was very rainy. It was clear pretty early on that we wouldn't be able to make the kind of wines we like most, those that express the power of Bolgheri. So we opted for a more varietal expression in the wines. In the cellar our vinifications were pretty much in line with what we do most years. We made our biggest adjustments in the aging of the wines, leaving the wines in oak for a shorter time than is normally the case.” In a similar vein, the 2002 and 2003 vintages demonstrate why Masseto is Italy's most consistently outstanding Merlot. Neither vintage presented anything resembling ideal conditions yet the wines have turned out beautifully. The estate's 2002s show why Tenuta dell”Ornellaia is one of Italy's premier properties. Those obsessed with points will chase the higher rated 2003s and 2004s, but consumers who buy wines to drink them would do well to consider these 2002s especially given that pricing should be favorable. The 2002s are by no means the equal of the estate's top wines but they will offer useful drinking while the more important vintages reach maturity.

Agronomist Leonardo Raspini shook his head when I asked him about the 2003 vintage. "Hot? Our average daily temperature in June was 25.8�C, when normally it's closer to 21�C, and there were many nights when it never went below 30�C," he told me. Yet Ornellaia, thanks in large measure to its uniquely situated vineyards, wasn't forced to harvest quite as early as other estates. "We picked some merlot on August 23rd," Raspini said, "but mainly from the 30th to the 10th of September. We didn't touch the merlot for Masseto until the 22nd and 23rd of September, and the grapes from the central portion of the vineyard weren't harvested until the 30th, which was unheard of in the area in 2003." Masseto's vineyard is located in a specific geological formation characterized by deep clays of different origins and age, and the soil content helps to explain the wine's uniqueness. "Still, we only made half the usual number of bottles," Raspini added. "Of the four different parcels that yield the grapes for Masseto, we were only able to use those that came from the central three-hectare plot, which is always the best, year in and year out. The other three suffered too much from the heat." Both '03 and '02 are excellent performances for their respective vintages.