1989 Ornellaia

The Tenuta dell'Ornellaia estate was founded in 1981 by Marchese Ludovico Antinori, whose objective was to create a world-class Bordeaux blend from a family property inherited from his mother in the Bolgheri section of the Tuscan Coast, close to Tenuta San Guido, where Sassicaia is made. More recently, Robert Mondavi purchased a stake in Ornellaia in 1999 and took over full ownership the following year. Mondavi then invited Frescobaldi, their partner in Tuscany on the Luce venture since the mid-'90s, to become a partner at Ornellaia, and Frescobaldi is now a 50% owner. Mondavi installed Thomas Duroux, a native of Bordeaux, as winemaker of Ornellaia in 2001. It was Duroux who showed me a spectacular series of Ornellaia vintages this winter in New York.x000D I had expected to see a representation of the estate's top vintages, but Duroux brought every wine back to the first commercial release of Ornellaia, the '85 (there was also a small quantity of wine made in 1984), including the lighter years. In even the poorest vintages, Ornellaia managed to produce respectable and distinctive wine, proof that this is truly a special site, one that is able to ripen its fruit virtually every year. These are wonderfully floral, elegant wines that are typically characterized by fine-grained cabernet sauvignon tannins. Recent vintages have brought more density and a stronger impression of extract—as well as greater ripeness and higher alcohol—without sacrificing aromatic complexity or balance. (Yet more evidence of the quality of this site: in addition to producing a cabernet/merlot blend that's widely considered one of the two or three greatest made in Italy, Ornellaia has offered the very expensive all-merlot wine Masseto since 1986. Although I have tasted only six vintages of Masseto to date, I am tempted to call this wine the finest merlot made anywhere in the world outside the Pomerol plateau.)x000D The Ornellaia vineyards, like so many favored grape-growing sites around the world, benefit from highly complex soils. In this case, there are three distinct influences: marine (limestone and sand deposits left behind by the receding sea), alluvial (mineral-rich sandy and loamy clays brought down from the Appennines, Italy's mountainous backbone) and volcanic (coarse, minerally metamorphic rock from the mountains above Bolgheri itself). Ornellaia enjoys a Mediterranean climate, warmer than that of Bordeaux. "We must accept having more alcohol in our wines if we want to get ripe enough tannins," Duroux told me. Still, he added, the village of Bolgheri is cooler than most other areas of Tuscany, thanks to its proximity to the sea and elevation just over 100 meters above sea level.x000D Ornellaia is typically about 65% cabernet sauvignon, 28% merlot, and the rest cabernet franc and petit verdot. The first real block of cabernet franc vines wasn't planted here until 1992, but some cabernet franc grapes found their way into the blends in the earlier vintages, according to Duroux. The estate now has 90 hectares under vine, and in 2001 produced about 150,000 bottles of Ornellaia.x000D In recent years, yields have been reduced to about 35 hectoliters per hectare, compared to 40+ in the late '80s and early '90s. Today's wines are higher in alcohol than previously. At the beginning, notes Duroux, the wines were typically between 13% and 13.5%, whereas today they are more like 14% to 14.5%. The estate now does its malolactic fermentations in barriques (Ornellaia buys French barrels from nine suppliers), and keeps its various lots separate for the first 12 months. In a typical year, Ornellaia gets between 60% and 80% new oak, up significantly from the late '80s, when the percentage of new oak was less than one-third. x000D The quality of Ornellaia has been further elevated by the introduction of a second wine, Le Serre Nuove, beginning in 1 997. This wine includes the estate's young vines as well as lots that are ...