https://delposto.com/news-events/dalceo-retrospective-dinner/
Holy shit. 39 wines, eh? But what’s for dessert?
Excessibe.
Thirty-nine wines and no Mario Batali!
True dat.
There is an upcoming Biondi-Santi dinner as well that only features nine wines…makes this look like a great deal.
And for a wine that really does not age all that great IMHO.
How much do you have experience? Because I’m not a big fan of most of the 2000’s vintages of Tignanello, but the ones from the 1970’s and 1980’s that I’ve tasted have been very impressive. The best vintages have aged gracefully and some of them have been surprisingly youthful (yet not backward) for their age.
Have been following the wine since the mid 80’s.
It will be a miracle if some of the older vintages are not DOA, even with good provenance. The experience may be as educational as it is pleasurable.
If you have so extensive experience how the wine ages, could you please shed some light why or how it ages poorly? Because for the greater part of the older vintages I’ve tasted the wine has aged really well.
Taking a very simplistic view, in my opinion, in the beginning it was not designed or produced to age that long. In the seventies they also had issues with ripening in the cab and in the cab franc. The vines were also young for those two varietals. Once the Super Tuscan movement got started then the vinification changed and the more recent blends are indeed more built to age. I enjoy the wine and try to consume it at the 10 to 15 year window. Cheers. Btw, I never claimed to have extensive experience. Just said that I had followed the wine since the 80’s.
Have you had recently any of the older ones? I myself have tasted 16 vintages of Tignanello, some of them even multiple times. There have been some vintages which have been past their peak (at least 1995, 1990 and 1986), but for example the first two commercial vintages - 1971 and 1975 - have been in exceptional condition, completely contradicting your claims that the wines back then were not built to age. Conversely, many of the older vintages seemed much more like classic Chianti Classicos, whereas from the early 2000’s the wine seemed to exhibit more modern style with more concentrated and noticeably sweeter-toned fruit with more obvious oak influence. In my opinion only recently have the wines been moving towards somewhat leaner and more “classicallyTuscan” style.
You might be correct that in the past it might’ve been impossible to reach the level of ripeness in Cabernets seen today, but the grapes certainly could reach higher levels of ripeness than cooler Bordeaux and those Bordelais wines could age wonderfully for decades as well. I’d also take into account that both Cabernets are cooler-climate varieties than Sangiovese, which requires more sun and warmth to ripen fully, making your point on ripening the Cabernets fully sound rather weird. Furthermore, the portion of Cabernet Sauvignon (and later Cabernet Franc) never has been higher than 30%, so its impact on the wine has never been as noticeable as Sangiovese.