| Score: |
98 WA.
"This wine brought to mind precise imagery of tailcoats, striped dress pants, wingtip collar shirts and other gentlemen's fashion choices from the Roaring Twenties. Sporting a retro but classic personality, the Marchesi Antinori 2018 Tignanello is quite the dapper and jovial wine that hits the market just as much of the world is emerging from a dark chapter of lockdowns and coronavirus curfews. I love the optimism that springs bright with such clarity and detail from within this blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. The 2016 vintage was a benchmark for sure, but I prefer the 2018, thanks to that tinge of nostalgia or emotion that is so deftly rendered in this cool, long growing season. The 2018 vintage offers a deconstructed Tignanello upon first inspection because you can clearly make out the varietal typicity of the grapes, especially the green spice and white pepper of the two Cabernets, along with aromas of crushed limestone that recall the white rocks carefully placed in the vineyards to protect the rows. The wine's fruit weight is contained and polished, and there are no exaggerations, excesses or loose ends. The results are calculated and exacting, especially if you consider the tannic management (with aging in both new and used Hungarian and French oak for up to 16 months) and the quality of the elegant mouthfeel. With time in the glass, those deconstructed elements converge to create unity and balance. The Tignanello vineyard is 57 hectares and sits at a breezy 390 meters above sea level with alberese and galestro soils. Those elevations proved important for shedding excess humidity at the end of this 2018 growing season. Production for this excellent wine is an impressive 345,000 bottles. ‘Progress counted in centimeters is much harder to achieve than progress counted in meters.’ This is the wisdom offered by Marchesi Antinori General Manager Renzo Cotarella at the end of a virtual meeting to discuss the wines presented in this Spotlight. Together, we discussed the 2018 Tignanello, the 2018 Bolgheri Superiore Guado al Tasso and the 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Pian delle Vigne among others. These wines are well established and enjoy long lives—consider that 1971 was the first year of production for the landmark wine Tignanello. An infinite series of tiny tweaks and subtle adjustments have been made over the years to transition a wine like Tignanello exactly 50 years into the future (from 1971 to 2021). If you’d like to read more on the history of this wine, you can read my article ‘1971 Tignanello.’ Half a century of progress is indeed counted in the smallest of measures. This is the first article in my ‘Tuscan Twenty’ series that focuses on icon wines of Tuscany. As readers may know, I find the term ‘super Tuscan’ off target and out of date, and I do everything I can to avoid it. However, I have not yet thought of a suitable alternative name for this catchall category of blended reds from Tuscany, including Tignanello, Sassicaia and Ornellaia, that revolutionized Italian wine and changed its destiny. Last year, the series was named ‘The Tuscan Ten,’ but that was too tight a fit given the many gorgeous wines I wanted to highlight, so this year I have doubled my aspiration and morphed the concept into ‘The Tuscan Twenty.’ This article features reviews of the latest 2018 Tignanello and other wines from the Chianti Classico appellation. The 2018 Chianti Classico Riserva Marchese Antinori sources its fruit from the family’s Tenuta Tignanello property. Other wines represent sites from various spots within the Chianti Classico appellation or greater Tuscany. I also reviewed the 2016 Brunello di Montalcino Pian delle Vigne and have included some exciting details that we can expect to see from this southern Tuscan property in the coming years. This Spotlight includes a review of the 2018 Bolgheri Superiore Guado al Tasso, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot from the Tuscan Coast. A shift to underline the Cabernet Franc is underway, and this vintage definitely cements that trend. The popular 2018 Bolgheri Rosso Il Bruciato on the market now was previously reviewed and you can find it in our database. Throughout this tasting, one wine emerged taller than the rest. The 2018 Tignanello is a beautiful creation and a wine that I discovered to be especially fascinating. In fact, I preferred the 2018 edition (that I scored 98 points) to the more hyped 2016 Tignanello (that I scored one point less). The wines are equals in terms of sheer magnitude and quality, but the 2018 vintage, born from a sometimes challenging growing season, ultimately evokes greater surprise and emotion. It showcases tight and linear elegance with old-fashioned stitching and tailoring. The 2018 season saw rains in the period immediately before harvest, but the hills, Chianti’s soil profile and elevations of the vines at 350 to 400 meters above sea level all helped to drain excess moisture away from the roots. Renzo Cotarella tells me that farming in 2018 was far easier in Chianti Classico than it was in the flatter areas of Bolgheri, where heavier soils captured the rainwater. Hilly vineyards make a big difference in the 2018 Tignanello, as do the subtle changes to the wine’s oak regime. A move to include Burgundy coopers has changed the tannic dimension of the wine and has shaped elegant and gentle oak tannins. Thanks to slow progress calculated centimeter by centimeter, the 2018 Tignanello hits all the right marks, considering also the context of these trying times." Monica Larner, Wine Advocate Interim, May 2021 |