Masseto Caveau Release: The High Renaissance of wine


At a special tasting in the temple devoted to one of Italy’s grandest wines, Robin Lee, with Masseto’s director Axel Heinz and Sotheby’s worldwide head of wine Jamie Ritchie, garnered privileged insights into the seven vintages to be auctioned by the house in April, a release named after the inner sanctum where the wines have been stored ever since they were enshrined


a Brunelleschi cupola? As impressive and imposing as a Piccolomini palazzo? As virtuoso as Michelangelo’s David and as sexy? What wine is so captivating, and so grand that you could say it embodies the very essence of Tuscany? It has to be Masseto. This may sound like hyperbole, but not to those who know the wine well.


W


hat wine is as perfectly proportioned and beautiful, as exquisite and rich, as


Masseto is a modern masterpiece,


one of Italy’s, and the world’s, outstanding wines. It was first created almost 40 years ago by Lodovico Antinori, scion of the eponymous Florentine wine dynasty, younger brother of Piero Antinori, who is head of the Marchesi Antinori empire that produces Tignanello, Solaia, and many other well-known wines. Lodovico Antinori founded the Ornellaia Estate in 1981. In 1986, the grapes from one


plot of Merlot, always intended to be a component of Ornellaia—a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated Bordeaux blend—was bottled separately. This wine was recognized to be of such exceptional quality, and to have such a unique and compelling character, that it was released the following year as its own cuvée,


Above: Axel Heinz, Masseto's talented estate director, amid the winery’s fermentation vats.


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023 | 65


All photography by Jon Wyand


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