Fattoria Piazzano blend 2 Super Tuscan 2013 Review

James finishing up his tasting of around 80 Super Tuscan wines from the 2017 vintage, which turned out to be much meliorate than expected.

Surprised is the best word I can recall of afterwards rating more than 80 butt samples of 2017 Super Tuscan reds in my tasting room in Italy on Monday, September iii. Yet I wasn't the only one in the room thinking the wines would be heavy and alcoholic. The 50-odd winemakers who assembled for our third En Primeur Toscana upshot were equally thrilled to find few caricatures of a parched and scorching vintage – one of the well-nigh farthermost in living memory for Italy'due south most famous wine region. In fact, most were fresh and structured albeit denser and richer than usual.

"In theory, the wines were non supposed to exist like that," admits Francesco Mazzei of the well-known Florentine wine family. "But I constitute the tasting really excellent. Particularly keen were the cabernets and merlots. In the end, the grapes were beautiful in 2017 as we had the know-how in both the vineyards and cellars to combat the hard weather."

I couldn't hold more. The cabernets, both sauvignons and francs, in improver to merlots, were the standouts of the tasting. They showed impressive intensity and purity too equally a buttress of rich tannins and tension. Conversely, the syrahs seemed a little overdone in most cases and many of the sangioveses lack heart palates. Perhaps it was due to their thinner skins, which couldn't cope with the harsh weather. Most producers agreed that sangiovese was more sensitive to the hellish weather during much of the growing flavor final twelvemonth.

I call up vividly last summer flying over Tuscany in a helicopter; that morn, literally thousands of hectares of yellowish-tinged vines extended beyond arid, sunburnt earth between Arezzo and Bolgheri. I wondered to myself how winemakers could make balanced wines in nearly continuous dry and hot weather. Consider that grape yields were down by 20 to 40 percent depending on the surface area. It was a recipe for jammy wines, or and so I thought. Withal the superlative winemakers of Tuscany seem to take pulled off some kind of winemaking phenomenon.

These are just a scattering of solid 2017 Super Tuscans. Fattoria Le Pupille Maremma Toscana Saffredi 2017 and Marchesi Antinori Toscana Solaia 2017 are both very promising with two-point score ranges above 95 points.

"We understand and so much better now how to work in our vineyards and cellars nether these conditions," says Giovanni Manetti, the patriarch of Chianti Classico'south great Fontodi wine estate. "It's not like by hot and dry years such as 2003 when we were less experienced."

Other winemakers at the tasting added that the vines seemed to be less afflicted by the punitive conditions in 2017 than in 2003 equally they had already become more accustomed to the hot and dry out atmospheric condition earlier in the year. "It was dry and unseasonably hot from the winter onwards, so the vines were less shocked," explains Barbara Widmer of Brancaia, the high-achieving winery in Radda in Chianti.

Any the reasons, the 2017 butt samples I tasted were if surprisingly high quality. Of course, they volition never be the great 2015s or 2016s, but many outstanding wines announced to have been made. I looked forward to tasting them in canteen in a year or 2 and seeing how they evolve. No uncertainty some exceptional wines will be bottled.

Please remember that the wines are barrel samples and only examples of what the concluding blends and bottlings may be. Therefore, as e'er, I used a two-betoken score range. — CEO/Editor James Suckling

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Source: https://www.jamessuckling.com/wine-tasting-reports/surprising-quality-top-2017-super-tuscan-reds/