(Claude Auguste / animated pic: runwayml)
When Piero Antinori (even more so his brother Ludwig) and the still largely unknown oenologist Giacomo Tachis decided in the early 1970s to ignore Chianti’s rigid rules, it was more than a technical-philosophical decision. At the time, the regulations still required white grapes in Chianti. Antinori dispensed with them, uncompromisingly focused on Sangiovese, added Cabernet Sauvignon and later Cabernet Franc, and matured the wine in small barriques. The result was a wine that lost its DOC status and could only be sold as a simple table wine. This supposed fall from grace, of all things, became the beginning of a revolution. The Super Tuscans were born. And with them began, shortly afterwards, the revolution of the Bolgheri Boys, who reshaped the entire wine world.
Today, half a century later, much of what was once fiercely contested seems almost self-evident: Cabernet in Tuscany no longer shocks anyone, barriques are (now less frequently) part of the winemaker’s toolkit, and the Italian wine world has reinvented itself. What has remained is the disruptor Tignanello: it now belongs among the great icons of European red wines and is also one of the few cult wines that has remained financially accessible to committed wine drinkers. The prices are high, but they still exist in a world where one genuinely wants to open and drink a bottle. That is precisely what distinguishes Tignanello from many other legends, which long ago found their way into safes and auction houses – a path into error.
I have tasted four vintages again: 1990 from magnum, along with 1998, 2001 and 2009. Four wines spanning almost twenty years. Four snapshots of this often-ridiculed and controversial icon.
1990 is considered a warm, very well-balanced vintage in Tuscany. A dry summer and even ripening produced concentrated, long-lived wines that have retained remarkable freshness to this day. After years of undisturbed storage in a stable cellar (this applies to all the wines here), the wine itself is incredibly young: tomato, plenty of cassis, cherry, rosehip, damp tobacco, a little mint and meadow herbs, and an insane pleasure on the palate. One of the best red wines in a very, very long time. Incidentally, the 1990 in magnum cost 840 schillings at Morandell in Tyrol in 1995: around 65 euros.
1998 was long overshadowed by the legendary 1997. Unjustly so. A mild spring, a warm summer and ideal conditions during ripening led to wines with composure, balance and remarkable elegance. Tignanello in particular benefited considerably from this – also because the cellar team at the time was a totally well-drilled, calm and appropriately vinifying team – many say, the best team ever on site. Here, at the outset, plenty of red earth on the nose, heart cherry, a brief hint of iron, then herbs, and only afterwards, including on the palate, the usual parameters: measured fruit and power. It should, however, be drunk up within the next five years.
2001 is in any case one of Tuscany’s great classic vintages. An almost ideal growing season produced wines that still rank among the longest-lived of their generation. Structure, freshness and ageing potential came together almost ideally – and I notice that in this bottle: enormously young, with certainly another 20 years of potential. And fresh on the nose and palate. I would have taken it for a Bordeaux from the 2010s.
2009 was markedly warmer. The growing season brought plenty of sunshine and high temperatures, while a few cooler nights prevented the loss of freshness. Many wines still show ripe fruit and an accessible texture today. But the 2009 was the weakest Tignanello of the series (and not, as expected, the 1998): a touch lactic, a touch too tomato-like in its overripe fruit (hardly any cherry), a touch boring. Magnificent on the finish when exhaling – but unfortunately only there.
Yet something else remains remarkable: Tignanello ages differently from many great red wines. It does not slowly disappear behind leather, undergrowth and tertiary aromas. The Sangiovese fruit remains clearly recognisable. It changes its form, loses its youth, but never the cherry and rosehip. At the same time, the Cabernet components merge increasingly with the wine until they are no longer perceived as grape varieties but as structure – which also takes the flavour of Tignanello a little further towards Bordeaux.
But that also explains why Tignanello could never become merely Bordeaux from Tuscany (although in the 1980s it almost did). The wine possesses international tools, but remains thoroughly Tuscan. Its acidity, its herbal spiciness, its fine-grained tannins and that unmistakable line between cherry, earth and Mediterranean herbs reveal its origins at all times. The four bottles in my cellar therefore tell less of individual vintages than of an idea that has enriched the wine world for more than fifty years. And may remain one of the few Supertuscans to survive the red-wine crisis.