2021 Masseto
How does this wine taste?
How full and heavy the wine feels in your mouth, like the difference between skimmed milk and cream. More alcohol, sugar and oak ageing make a wine fuller.
The drying, grippy feel on your gums and tongue, as with strong tea. It comes from the skins and seeds of black grapes and from oak, and softens with age.
How much sugar you taste, from dry to sweet. Fruity is not the same as sweet: a dry wine can taste of ripe fruit.
How fresh and juicy the wine is: acidity makes your mouth water. High acidity tastes lively and refreshing, low acidity soft and round.
What we taste What you taste Click a taste for what it means
The bars follow how sommeliers taste (WSET): body, tannin, sweetness and acidity, each from low to high.
Body: powerful. Fuller than most red wines from ; 14% alcohol.
Tannin: firm. From ; aged in oak.
Sweetness: dry. Red wine from Super Tuscan is almost always dry.
Acidity: medium. from the warm climate of .
Aromas: dark fruit and red fruit, typical of
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Log inThe Ornellaia Masseto has developed beautifully in recent years with the evolution of oak and bottle aging. This is a highly distinctive edition of the Italian Merlot, resulting in a silky, streamlined wine. The Masseto is a (cult) wine of great class! The palate is full-bodied and elegant, with abundant red fruit, perfect tannins, and a perfectly long finish. The nose reveals aromas of red fruit, such as plums, jam, and hints of chocolate. This wine is ready to drink now, but will continue to develop in quality in the bottle over the coming years. A wine of great class! The palate is full-bodied and elegant, with abundant red fruit, perfect tannins, and a perfectly long finish. The nose reveals aromas of red fruit, such as plums, jam, and hints of chocolate.
The 2021 Masseto is truly stunning and demonstrates the estate's development in recent years. Many connoisseurs (the 100/100 score attests to this) consider it one of the finest wines ever made here. The 2021 represents a shift toward a more refined style. The bombastic intensity and extraction that were once the norm here are less prevalent. Refined notes of crushed flowers, spices, blood orange, and bright red fruit grace the palate. Floral aromas and salty undertones are sometimes reminiscent of the Cabernet Franc present in the 2019 and 2020 vintages, but the 2021 returns to the classic 100% Merlot. The wine was aged for 24 months in 100% new French oak.
FACT: The Ornellaia Masseto is also a wine that is only distributed through the Place du Bordeaux, where we, as Grand Crus, can purchase directly. Be very wary of counterfeit bottles, which are much more common than the official Masseto, so always buy this iconic wine from an authorized wine merchant. In the tab: Attachment, you'll find the official fact sheet for this fine wine. We'll automatically send it to you when you order this wine. The wine is stored in our climate-controlled Wine Warehouse, and if you pick it up, you'll often receive a nice discount. We're located almost next to the Rijksweg with ample parking. Click here for the address.
Character
The wine
- 100%
Origin
Bottle
Wine features
Parker
The Wine Advocate
RP 95
Reviewed by:
Monica Larner
Release Price:
$950
Drink Date:
2027 - 2055
The 2021 Masseto is back to being 100% Merlot. Recent past vintages saw a tiny part of Cabernet Franc. That second varietal in the blend represents the proverbial "tax" one must pay in the face of climate change, especially when making wine on the sun-drenched Tuscan Coast. This is a very rich and elaborate expression with the extract, tannic tightness and the hefty 15.5% alcohol content to match. It comes off as quite big-boned or monotone. The wine is redolent of blackberry confit and cooked cherry, with a wide range of sweet oak spices to close. There is dark chocolate with a thin lining of creamy mint filling. Within the context of that fullness and generous fruit weight, Masseto is quite a commitment in terms of price and further cellaring. More bottle aging is an absolute requirement.
Here's a bit of news I am especially happy to report: between the sister estates Ornellaia and Masseto, bottle weight has been reduced by 82 tons in two years. The goal is to reduce an additional 12 tons before next year. For example, the bottle for the 2021 Masseto reviewed here was reduced by 150 grams to its current weight of 600 grams. This is a theme I have been following carefully (https://www.robertparker.com/wines/u8L84HES4Nid48LDw), because if a brand as important as Masseto takes a leadership stand on environmentally unfriendly glass bottles, other estates will surely follow.
This is a time of enormous change for Ornellaia and Masseto. Estate Director Axel Heinz left his position in March 2023 after nearly two decades in Bolgheri. The German-born, Bordeaux-trained winemaker is currently employed at Château Lascombes in Margaux. Axel joined the Tuscan estate in 2005 and oversaw the development of Ornellaia and Masseto as distinct brands, each with their own dedicated winery today. Lamberto Frescobaldi is president of the group today. Former Ornellaia CEO Giovanni Geddes, the visionary who brought Masseto to La Place de Bordeaux, announced his retirement in 2023.
Starting January 1, 2024, a new team was put into place. Marco Balsimelli is charged with production (returning home to Italy from Bordeaux, where he spent 17 years with Laboratoire Oenologique Boissenot) and Giuliano Tarchi is vineyard manager (for both Ornellaia and Masseto). Gaia Cinnirella is winemaker for Masseto, and the Ornellaia winemaker is Denise Cosentino (she replaces outgoing Olga Fusari).
Published: Feb 15, 2024
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James Suckling
Masseto Toscana 2021
Monday, August 12, 2024
CountryItaly
RegionTuscany
Vintage2021
CHECK PRICE
DOWNLOAD SHELFTALKER
Score
98
Blueberries and black olives with violets and hints of sage, as well as rosemary flowers. Full and powerful with lots of fruit and vanilla on the palate. A rich and flavorful red, yet held together beautifully. Muscular and powerful. Needs five or six years to come together. Give it time.
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Wine Spectator
Masseto
Toscana 2021 | $900
Plum and blackberry flavors are wrapped in an embrace of toasty oak, with vanilla, resin and iron accents. Dense tannins coat the gums, while bright acidity keeps this focused and drives the spice-infused aftertaste. Fluid and long, this silky red ultimately is all about finesse. A superb success in a great vintage. Merlot. Best from 2027 through 2047. 440 cases imported.
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Vinous
100
Drinking Window
2027 - 2051
From: 2024 Tuscany Preview (Feb 2024)
The 2021 Masseto is a stunner. It also shows how much the estate has evolved in recent years. I was reminded of that recently when I drank the 2001, considered by many observers, including this one, to be one of the greatest wines ever made here. The 2021 represents a move towards a more refined style. There’s less of the bombastic intensity and extraction that were once the norm here. I remember young vintages that were impossible to taste young. The 2021, on the other hand, is an absolute delight. Crushed flowers, spice, blood orange and bright, red-toned fruit all grace the palate. Floral aromatics and saline underpinnings are at times reminiscent of the Cabernet Franc found in the 2019 and 2020, but the 2021 is back to the classic 100% Merlot. Readers will find a Masseto built on linear energy more than volume. The 2021 is quite simply the most exquisite, refined young Masseto I have ever tasted. Aging was 24 months in 100% new French oak.
- By Antonio Galloni on February 2024
Winemaker Gaia Cinnirella and her team turned out a stunning Masseto that will take its place among the greatest wines ever made here. There’s a new feeling of elegance in Masseto that is palpable. The tannin profile and integration of new oak, in particular, show noticeable strides in a direction that values finesse more than power alone. The new, dedicated cellar, with its custom-designed tanks and high humidity, surely plays a role, but ultimately, a wine reflects the vision of its winemaker more than anything else. The 2021 Masseto is absolutely brilliant. Don’t miss it!
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Lodovico Antinori already had a head start at birth. The Antinoris have been among the Florentine merchant nobility for centuries and already joined the wine buyers' guild in 1385. Since then, there has always been one member of the family in the wine trade. The family estates in Tuscany were greatly expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries and the family gained a lot of experience in the winery. At the beginning of this century, she founded an influential trading company. Marquis Lodovico worked for a while in the family business, but decided to go his own way in the early 1980s. He created an extensive vineyard on Tenuta dell'Ornelllaia, a family estate in Bolgheri on the Mediterranean, 96 km from Florence.
This part of the Maremma not only has a beautiful wild nature, but is also a fertile agricultural area, a region with great potential for wine production. Lodovico's uncle, Marquis Incisa della Rochetta, had already drawn Bolgheri's attention to the wine world with his pioneering work on Tenuta San Guido and with his Sassiciaia, now regarded as one of the world's greatest red wines.
Lodovico Antinori followed in his uncle's footsteps in nearby Ornellaia, although he makes a completely different type of wine. He learned from a number of international wine authorities that the character of the Bolgheri soil resembled that of St.-Émilion and Pomerol in Bordeaux was ideal for the production of quality wine. The special feature of the Ornellaia vineyard - for Italian standards - is the high percentage of merlot. The assembly for Antinori's top wine, the red Ornellaia, contains 40% merlot. However, this grape comes into its own best at the vigna veccia (old vines) of the winery. Since 1987, this plot has supplied the raw material for a 100% Merlot cuvée called the Masseto. The grapes for this wine have been picked under a sunny September sky. After the long fermentation of 18-20 days, the wine is naturally transferred to tanks. After which a maturing process in new Barriques. The result is a wine with structure, very pure fruit and a beautiful balance.
De 2021 Masseto toont een weelderig smaakpalet van geconfitureerde bessen en rijpe kersen, warme eikenspijzen, donkere chocolade en subtiele bloemige en zoute ondertonen, ondersteund door stevige maar verfijnde tannines en een lange, elegante afdronk. Daardoor sluit hij prachtig aan bij malse runderrib, langzaam gegaard lam of wild waarbij de gerechten rijk van smaak en vet zijn, bij krachtige, gerijpte kazen en bij stevige pastagerechten en pizza met hartige ragù of paddenstoelen en truffel; de wijn snijdt door vet en umami heen en legt een mooie harmonie met de fruitige en kruidige tonen. Bij voorkeur combineer je hem met gegrild of geroosterd vlees met een kruidige korst, langzaam gestoofd of gerijpt vlees in een tomaten- of wijnjus, of intense kazen zoals aged pecorino of comté om de complexiteit en lengte van de Masseto maximaal te laten spreken.
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