2009 Tignanello — On Super Tuscans & Wine Review
Every day when I watch the news my heart hurts. Everyday for something less than a month now, the news from Italy are grim. The number of people who lost the fight with Covid-19 is staggering. More than 10.000! A surreal and frightening number. There is not much we can do other than sending our thoughts and prayers and staying home to prevent a dramatic situation from happening in our own countries.
My tiny contribution will be to talk about one of Tuscany’s legendary wineries, Marchesi Antinori and their flagship wine, Tignanello which I tasted for the first time last week.
Every wine book, every article ever written about modern Italian wine and winemaking refers to Piero Antinori’s pivotal role in the resurrection of Italian wine in the 1970s. His decision to grow foreign, “international,” varieties and blend them with Sangiovese, forgoing age old traditions and disregarding stiff DOCG regulations has been nothing short of revolutionary. Tignanello was the first of many “Super Tuscans” that put Italy back on the map of high quality extra premium wine.
For the non wine-jargon initiated, “Super Tuscan” might bring up images of a flying wine bottle, sporting a super hero cape set off to save the world and get rid once and for all the raffia-clad Chianti bottles and their less than mediocre and sloppy mass…
