Description
If Le Serre Nuove is a mini Ornellaia, Le Volte is just delicious. Unlike Le Serre and Ornellaia, Le Volte has some Tuscan Sangiovese in the blend. 2017 is the perfect vintage to be buying Le Volte to drink. You can definitely cellar Le Volte, but I’d suggest buying the 2016 Le Volte to cellar and just enjoying the 2017 le Volte in a fit of hedonistic pleasure.
[box]Le Volte dell’ Ornellaia Bolgheri DOC 2017 and all wines are eligible for at least 5% off any six bottles. And 10% off any 12 bottles. Some wines will be at a more significant discount and not subject to further discounts.[/box]
Le Volte is instantly appealing. Red currants, pithy, spice, fruit cake and a hint of sulphide/rubber. Le Volte’s palate offers more red fruits, mineral characters and very Sangiovese dry, earthy, olives and animalé. Le Volte 2017 is very, very, very good. Pair Le Volte with braised veal, olives, sausages. I really want a Tuscanised cassoulet.
Le Volte dell’Ornellaia Bolgheri DOC 2017 Wine Notes
Wine Advocate
92 points
“Lots of big, dark fruit and a lack of water in the grapes define the unique personality of the 2017 Le Volte dell’ Ornellaia. This is a highly extracted and succulent expression that delivers abundant fruit sweetness. The key to this vintage was waiting for proper ripeness, says estate manager and winemaker Axel Heinz. “The grapes continued to get smaller throughout the summer,” he says. That lack of water resulted in very concentrated fruit, giving this entry-level wine a rich and modern feel as a result.”
Ornellaia was founded in 1981 undergoing several changes of ownership until the Frescobaldi family took it over in 2005. Located near Bolgheri with around 192 hectares in total encompassing the vineyards, winery and the adjacent Bellaria property just North of Bolgheri. One of the driving forces of the Super Tuscan movement. The estate’s Ornellaia, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc is a seductive and evocative wine that has won much praise from wine critics and drinkers alike with its impressive colour, concentration and intensity of aroma and flavour. Other wines from the estate provide excellent quality, also including the superb Le Serre Nuove and La Volte blends.
Merlot
It gets a tough time most of the places it is grown. But in Pomerol and Saint-Emilion Merlot not only dominates but makes some of the best wines in the world. Perfume, silky and plush. Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon season the wines with structure and acid but in some places, like Petrus, they are almost not needed.
Cabernet Sauvignon
The main grape of Bordeaux’s left bank. Cabernet is late-ripening and full of acid and tannin. The great wines have structure but finessed with beautiful cassis, violets, and it also transmits the flavours of the soil it is grown in really well. Cabernet isn’t a drink now variety; it needs 10 or more years to show its best. But when you get there, WOW! Often blended with Merlot, Cabernet Franc or in Australia Shiraz to fill out its mid-palate referred to as the ‘Cabernet doughnut’.
Sangiovese
Widely cultivated across Italy from Emilia-Romagna to Campania. Sangiovese produces as much wine as Barbera in Italy. Sangiovese has a wide range of clones. Couple this with hugely diverse growing conditions and you get a lot of variety: Rosato (rose), easy-drinking ‘quaffers’, all the way to benchmarks. Brunello di Montalcino, Chianti, Sangiovese di Romagna and Morellino di Scansano are all top examples.
Bolgheri
Located in the commune of Castagneto Carducci in Tuscany. Bolgheri’s Mediterranean climate, paired with its soil types allow the red Bordeaux varieties to excel. A Decanter magazine tasting helped Bolgheri find international renown when a 6-year-old Sassicaia’ Super Tuscan’ was ranked higher than a range of Bordeaux. Red wines may be up to 70% Sangiovese, 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 80% Merlot, and other local red varieties, up to 30%.
Super Tuscans
It is essential to understand it is a name that does not have any legal status. The wine trend started because the Chianti laws stated that you could only use 70% Sangiovese and had to include at least 10% of local white grapes in your blend. It meant that a lot of Chianti was more like Rosato and did not age.
The Super Tuscans were a group of producers who chose to ditch the Chianti laws to use international varieties and/or higher amounts of Sangiovese to make the best wine they could from their terroir. These wines were labelled at Vino da Tavola and were selling for significantly more than the best wines of Chianti.
In the 1990s the laws were changed, and a lot of the Super Tuscan wines could legally use Chianti again. But most of them used the Toscana IGT appellation, which came to be to allow these experimental wines to exist too.
Chianti Classico DOCG
Italy’s most famous wine region. Beautiful lightly wooded rolling hills covered in vineyards, olive groves and cypress trees. The reds from Chianti Classico received its most significant boost in quality from being awarded the much more stringent DOCG rating.
Central Italy
When most people think of Central Italy, they think of Tuscany. Not surprisingly because Chianti is an ocean of vineyards within the winegrowing region of Central Tuscany. Chianti produces more than 750000 hectolitres of wine each year. Tuscany’s wine history starts somewhere in the 8th-5th Century BCE when it was part of Etruria. Vernaccia from San Gimignano and reds from Montepulciano were known and loved before the Renaissance. The Tuscany we know now started in the 19th Century with Chianti gaining the ascendancy. Brunello di Montalcino debuted in 1888, and the Super Tuscans took shape in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Beyond Tuscany, there are the magical places of Emilia Romagna, Marche, Abruzzo and Umbria. Each area has a unique history and personality that deserve a night of their own. Better still, a few nights in situ.
Italian Wine
There are 1000s and 1000s of grapes in Italy. There are sub-alpine cool-climate regions in the North and Sun-baked vineyards in the South. Add to that, volcanoes and many cultures within one Country. You could struggle to find anything uniform about the wines. The best of the best include Tuscan reds from Sangiovese or Cabernet. Nebbiolo from Piedmont, especially Barolo and Barbaresco. The aromatic whites of NE Italy from Garganega, Pinot Grigio, and numerous crazy blends. The volcanic wines of Mt Etna in Sicily. And many more.
The only generalisation I will make is that a lot of Italian wine is undervalued when compared to a similar French style.
Wine
Wine is the result you get from fermented grape juice. There is proof of wine production dating back 8000 years ago. Fashions, innovations and many other factors have influenced the way wine has evolved over the years.
The wine grape is special. It contains everything you need to make grape wine except for the yeast, which lives on the outside of the skins.
Human inputs can influence the final product, including the viticulture (growing) choices. And the winemaker can shape the wine to a point too.
The best wines of the world often refer to terroir. Terroir is a French term that refers to all the climatic, geological and topographical influences on a specific piece of land. And it is true that neighbouring vineyards, grown identically, can taste noticeably different.
Red Wine
Fun fact; most of the colour for wines comes from the skins. There are only a handful of grapes that have red juice. Alicante is the most well known of these grapes.
By macerating the juice on the skins, the wine gains tannins, and flavours. Certain compounds change the chemistry of the wine too.
Red wines tend to have higher alcohol. More tannin and more oak flavours compared to other styles of wine. But the thousands of grapes and terroirs they grow in influence this.
Bolgheri 2017
Another successful year. 2017 will not be considered as good as 2016 over time. But, in the short-term, I can see a lot of wine lovers drinking the 2017s and tucking the 2016s away in the cellar to slowly improve. 2017 is a warm, dry vintage. The producers who survived the 2003 conditions were well placed to harness the heat while avoiding the fruit cooking on the vine.
The best 2017s will improve with time in your cellar. But, they’ll provide enough joy for you to pop the corks now.
The Wine Depository
I, Phil, have been running The Wine Depository since 2011. The Wine Depository exists to make sure you are drinking the good wines. You can browse and pick what is interesting to you. Or you can make contact with me. I’ll make sure you get what you want, to your palate, to your budget and to your door.
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