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Ornellaia Bianco 2013–2019: The reinvention of white Bolgheri
The estate behind one of Italy’s finest red wines has worked hard to produce a white wine worthy of the Ornellaia name. Margaret Rand joined chief winemaker Axel Heinz in London for its first-ever vertical tasting, charting the evolution of the wine over its first seven vintages
xel Heinz has a neat way of describing a poor summer: it’s “absence of drought.” Heinz is, of course, the chief winemaker at Ornellaia. And Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast, is not a place one normally associates with dreadful summers or any euphemisms for dreadful summers. But the context is that Ornellaia Bianco, which is mostly and sometimes entirely Sauvignon Blanc, needs enough water. “Warm years can be good if there’s enough water,” he says. In 2014, when there was a great absence of drought, the wine was remarkably good—but let’s leave the tasting notes aside for the moment. Instead, how do you invent a white wine when you already have Ornellaia? It has to match up. And Bolgheri—even though it’s on the coast, and even though it grows some white (mostly
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Vermentino), and even though the original DOC was for white and rosé rather than red—does not offer many clues as to what such a white might be. Ornellaia did make a white, in the
past. It was called Poggio alle Gazze dell’Ornellaia, and Lodovico Antinori, who founded Ornellaia, always had a soft spot for Sauvignon Blanc, so that’s what it was. But it was stopped when the current ownership took over; and when they began to think again about white, they started with a clean slate. Quite a small slate, though, since they envisioned only 4,000–10,000 bottles and without much to refer to as a model. As a starting point, there are Bordeaux grapes in Ornellaia. Semillon seemed obvious to begin with, but consultant Michel Rolland said, Yes, wonderful idea; you’ll have to wait 30 years for the vines to mature. They
did plant some in the end but picked the first grapes only in 2022, so it’s a bit early to say what it will be like. Heinz thought about Mediterranean grapes for more exuberance: Viognier and, yes, Vermentino. Viognier blended into Sauvignon Blanc at somewhere between 10 and 30 percent might work, he thought. But Viognier, he says, “is not great every year. It’s unreliable in yields and in picking dates. “I thought we could pick Sauvignon
Blanc early and add richness with Viognier, but there’s a fine line between opulence and heaviness—just a few days’ difference. Sauvignon Blanc can ripen well without losing acidity.” He also thought of Petit Manseng, which they use for their occasional sweet wine, Ornus. There’s an experimental plot of Verdicchio, too. But Petit Manseng isn’t really suited to dry wine—it’s far happier making sweet, and “Verdicchio isn’t much of a team player. It’s always better on its own.”
They could have tried more Italian varieties, perhaps from around Rome; they could have tried Chardonnay, though they felt it wouldn’t fit the overall style of Ornellaia. So, there was a certain inevitability to settling on Sauvignon Blanc as the main grape. “I decided that what I liked most in the wine was Sauvignon Blanc.” But the wine looks neither to the Loire nor to New Zealand for inspiration. Nor Pessac-Léognan, since there’s not much visible oak. Semillon in the blend might take it further that way, but
Opposite: The state-of-the-art Ornellaia winery in Bolgheri, where a Sauvignon- dominant white has been resurrected.
96 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 79 | 2023
All photography courtesy of Ornellaia
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