First produced in 1985, the Ornellaia red wine is one of Italy’s most famous, and is coveted by collectors and wine lovers everywhere. In the relatively short time frame of forty years (which is nothing compared to some of France’s most famous wineries), the Tenuta dell’Ornellaia (tenuta is the Italian word for ‘estate’) has established itself as one of the most iconic producers in Italy (and not just Italy). In fact, over the years, the winery has become associated with another iconic wine too, Masseto, a 100% Merlot wine (since 2019 has been made at its own winery). To be crystal-clear, and it is most definitely a merit that Ornellaia can and should be proud of, there are very few wine estates anywhere in the world that can boast of making two similarly great, iconic wines.
Being of Italian parents, I was fortunate to have lived in Italy during the 1980s (and prior to that, while living in Canada, to have spent most of the summers of the 1970s in Italy as well): in short, I was able to live, first-hand, the renaissance of Italian wine. It is not an exaggeration to state that I have almost certainly sat through more verticals of Ornellaia than any other English-language wine writer (and probably of Italian ones too), so it is an estate I know well. That also includes being one of a handful of people to ever taste the Tenuta’s legendary Merlot wine, Masseto, even before it was ever released and wasn’t even yet called Masseto. (I was at dinner at the Il Dito e la Luna restaurant in Rome’s San Lorenzo district with an Ornellaia representative of the time, dining with perhaps the city’s then most famous wine shop owner, when we were served a 1986 red simply called “Merlot dell’Ornellaia” -of which only 600 bottles were made. That was the wine that became Masseto in 1987, its first official vintage.)
