Masseto Tenuta dell'Ornellaia 2017

At Masseto, we try to limit our action on wine as much as possible. The goal is simple: to capture the spirit of nature and bring it to its highest levels. Everything revolves around an extraordinary, very demanding vineyard and a son of the utmost simplicity. We have tanks, barrels, a gravity vinification system. And people who love to take care of this wine. That's all. It is our philosophy.

Above, around and below. The sea. Without it Masseto could not exist.

During the summer, its rippled surface reflects like a mirror, doubling the sunlight. The refracted, pure, intense and indirect sunlight feeds the vines and softens the tannins making them voluptuous, subtly nuanced, simply perfect.

As the light rests on the vineyard, the sea generates another element. A light wind breeze, full of humidity, creeps between the vines and the bunches of grapes. Fresh air mitigates the ripening process, extends the delicate evolution of sustained and balanced acidity, refreshes the fruit in the driest months and makes it drier in the wettest months.

In the subsoil there is a third element brought by the sea. The roots of the vineyard find their way into a layer of blue clay, dating back millions of years. In what was once a seabed, today there are traces, minerals and fossils, of a past life. With a heart as hard as stone, but with an intriguing fragility, clay knows exactly how to adapt to the surrounding environment and climate.

The winery is in perfect symbiosis with the surrounding hills and vineyard. On the surface, only the reception area of ​​the grapes and the old house in Masseto can be seen. The grapes are selected by hand and carefully transferred to the concrete fermentation tanks below. They are 65 hectoliters tanks that stand out for their antithetical appearance. Faceted on the outside, they have a tulip-shaped interior, which guarantees a particularly delicate extraction. Still below, two barriques, for the first and second year of stay in wood, and an experimental barrique cellar expand the possibilities of micro-vinification and maturation, making it easier to satisfy the specific needs of each vintage and plot.

VINTAGE 2017

2017 will be remembered as one of the hottest and driest years in recent history. Due to an unusually mild winter, with temperatures 3 ° C above average, budding took place two weeks early. With the exception of a brief period of cold weather in late April, the entire growing season was dominated by a hot and dry climate, which led to less crown development. Flowering and fruit set took place in good conditions, but the lack of water limited the size of the bunches and berries. The months of July and August were hot and almost rainless, but fortunately characterized by sufficiently cool nights to allow the vines to recover from the heat and continue to ripen the fruits constantly, maintaining excellent levels of acidity in the grapes.

The harvest started early and was the fastest ever, with only three days of harvest between 24 and 30 August. Given the particular conditions, the grapes were harvested by age of the vine instead of by single parcel, thus producing only four different batches.