Masseto – The whispered legend of the blue hill
There,
where the Tuscan sun bathes the Tyrrhenian Sea in golden light
and gentle breezes blow down from the nearby forest, lies a hill that
changed the world of wine forever. Its name sounds like a promise –
Masseto, derived from the Italian word for rock, for the hard
stone that the blue clay turns into during dry summers. It was the
Russian-American oenologist André Tchelistcheff who, in the early
1980s, recognised the extraordinary potential of this 120-metre-high
hill – a terroir that seemed tailor-made for the noble
Merlot.
Marquis
Lodovico Antinori founded Tenuta dell’Ornellaia in 1981, and what began as
a bold experiment was to become a legend. Tchelistcheff advised
him to plant a small plot with Merlot – advice that
was to prove brilliant. The first vintage, from 1986, was
still simply called ‘Merlot’, but by the following year the
wine was given the name it bears today. On just seven hectares of vineyards,
caressed by the Mediterranean sun and the mild temperatures of the
sea, the grapes ripen to a level of concentration that
is unrivalled.
The
terroir tells its own story: the upper part of the hill,
known as ‘Masseto Alto’, imparts elegance and depth. The central section,
the ‘Masseto Centrale’, is the heart and soul of the wine – a
clay soil of almost cement-like hardness, which produces grapes of incredible
power and a firm tannin structure. Every grape is harvested by hand;
every step, from harvest to blending, is an act
of the utmost precision and dedication. In the cellar, the wine matures for around 24
months in new French oak barriques before being bottled
– each time a small miracle of power and grace.
Today,
Masseto is more than just a wine – it is the essence of a single
hill, Italy’s most expensive wine and a living testament to the fact
that true greatness sometimes emerges from the most unassuming of places. Since
2017, it has operated as a wine estate in its own right in Bolgheri, having long
served as Ornellaia’s second wine. Its spirit remains the same: a
Merlot of breathtaking depth, which preserves in every bottle the whispering
song of the blue hill – a myth that is retold anew with every vintage
.
