What is cool? Plenty of A-listers still visit Sassicaia I’d say probably cooler than me. I mean orange wine to me can range to not good at all to pretty nice, but it’s gained a hipster following which perhaps is “cool” or not depending on your POV. I recently had a Super Tuscan that was Cabernet / Cab Franc blend I thought was quite good and priced competitively against Bordeaux. Some of the problem I have though is the same trying to sell Bordeaux style Californian wines. The customers I see day to day if they want an old world tasting wine they’ll just shop that region… getting back on track…
Super Tuscans to me have been more like the dark horse when picking out a wine for the night. I think the time of Super Tuscans have passed as far as the limelight, but still are quality wines.
Thanks for all the great responses everyone! As someone not very experienced with these wines, I was mostly just curious about your general thoughts, not only their cool-factor. I guess the reason I started by asking if they were still cool or not, was mostly an acknowledgement that the prevailing sentiment, at least among WBers, is that we should be embracing hyper-local varieties and traditional wine styles over “international wines” that seem to be created just to chase inflated critic scores.
I’m a big fan of hyper-local and traditional as much as the next person (my last tasting note was for an unfined, unfiltered, spontaneously fermented 100% Pignolo for God’s sake), but as someone who enjoys both Bordeaux and Chianti/Brunello, Super Tuscans seemed like an interesting area to explore.
Now that we’re on the subject, I ran across a bottle of 2015 Le Pergole Torte sitting on a retail shelf. It wasn’t cheap, but a bit below the Wine-Searcher low. I’ve never had this wine, but many people love it. CT reviews are good, not great. What are thoughts on this wine specifically? Capital-G Great? Worth the money? Mostly hype?
I would chime in and say that people who are into “steak wines”, your Opus Ones, Silver Oak etc. also usually are also into your 'ias and other top shelf super tuscans. Like some modern bordeaux, high end Chilean & Argentinian wines all of these are shades of the same color and that’s what that subset of the wine drinking world go for.
The problem with semantics. I use cool as the opposite: “something of enduring charm and appeal.” For example, my idea of cool music is 1950s-1960s jazz - hardly trendy stuff these days, with Miles Davis’s “Birth of the Cool” being one of the all time great albums.
What is cool? The question reminds me of Tower of Power’s “What is Hip?”
What is hip?
Tell me, tell me if you think you know
What is hip?
If you was really hip
The passing years would show
Some of the Super Tuscans are coming back into the DOCG world - witness the whole Gran Selezione trend.
I don’t really understand the logic of that, especially for a producer who made their brand themselves.
As a consumer, to me the issue is that they don’t know what they’ll get when they buy a ‘fantasy name’ wine - will it be a Bordeaux blend? or sangiovese driven? or even a pure merlot
That being said, there are lovely wines being offered under that flag. I had a lush 2007 Greppicaia a few months ago that was totally worth the cellar time.
It’s great, definitely on the traditional side of the spectrum in terms of what the wine is like in the glass, and it ages really well. It’s worth the price, if not necessarily a bargain or anything. It’s been forever since I’ve tried one young, though, so I’m not sure how it shows at what young ages.
Like Flaccianello, this wine was a story of a producer wanting to make something better than the DOCG rules allowed back in the 1970s, when you were required to blend other grapes in with sangiovese to make Chianti, and the overall reputation of Chianti was poor. So he said to hell with the rules, made Le Pergole Torte out of 100% sangiovese, and made a great, classic wine.
Masseto is the only real “cool” wine in this neighborhood, even though it is Merlot. There just are not that many places on earth outside of some dirt in Pomerol that can produce Merlot like this. The price is reflective of that, and is ridiculous of course.
You have made some really great points in this thread and provided a lot of useful information. I think that Tuscany runs an similar path to what happened in Piedmont at the same time. The Barolo Boys (and girl) and others in the Langhe sought to overthrow their parents’ traditions in wine making. While they kept the grapes (not many Super Piedmontese wines were made), they rejected and replaced all kinds of methods the techniques, aiming for wines that were deeper, darker, denser, and more internationally appealing. Instead of seeking to refine and clean up old techniques (which was also happening), they sort of reinvented the wheel (a square one, in my opinion). Meanwhile, the Mascarellos, Rinaldis, etc. kept doing their same silly old thing. And look how the new wave has basically faded away in favor of traditional wines.
My only problem with your comments is that it seems you are stating that indigenous Tuscan grapes/blends somehow made inherently inferior wines. I’d say that this again is a factor of poor quality control in the vineyard and cellar as opposed to poor raw materials or vinification methods. The proof of this is the excellent bottles produced in the 1960s to the present with the traditional model. That they were so few in the past speaks more to a focus on quantity over quality. So like Piedmont, the instinct was to react instead of reform. And like Piedmont, many Tuscan producers seem to be shifting back to traditional grapes. It is ironic that STs started in part as a rebellion against rules, yet since 2006 traditional white grapes have been banned.
A slight timing caveat Chris, as the original Super Tuscans originated in the late 1960s (Vigorello IIRC just pre-dating one of the bigger names).
Arguably the need was more pressing in Tuscany, especially Chianti, with even 100% sangiovese falling outside a stupid dictat that white grapes had to be included in the blend. Hence the super tuscans arose earlier, whilst the barrique / rotofermenters came as a later change to the Langhe, though we sometimes brush over the earlier modernisers, a generation before the Barolo boys (I have a vague recollection that Ratti was one of these early revolutionaries).
Certainly the Tuscan parent / child differences of opinion no more obvious than at Biondi-Santi, with the son setting off on his own and the company eventually getting sold to outsiders.
If it came off that way, it definitely was not my intent. I absolutely love Tuscan sangiovese, including good examples of Chianti, Brunello, and Super Tuscans.
I think the winemaking and rules were not leading to the best those wines could be, and a wave of winemakers threw off the rules and customs to try to make something better. Sometimes, it was making something more generically international in appeal, sometimes it was making something that was even truer to the grape and the region than the DOCG wines, and everywhere in between.
Since “Super Tuscan” can cover all of that range, I guess I’d suggest not to treat it as one thing, and not assume it’s necessarily the modern/international/ripe/oaky thing, but to consider the merits of each wine and how it interests your palate. Some of them are really fantastic, and the uncool fashion of them may lead to some better values for your dollar than you find elsewhere.
But I was also referring the the blending grapes of Canaiolo and Colorino which can potentially make for a unique expression, similar to adding Vespolina and Uva Rara to Nebbiolo.
Visited Bolgheri for a few days in 2019 when we were in Tuscany and was thoroughly unimpressed with virtually every winery. The wine culture there is totally sterile and devoid of charm. It’s like touristy Napa, but without the great weather and restaurants. Our experience at Le Macchiole was the worst winery experience I’ve ever had. Some others were snobbish or charged over 100 euro to visit. I have a really hard time even thinking about drinking the international blend Super Tuscans after this.
That being said, I adore Le Pergole Torte which is really just an unlabeled Chianti Classico. I’d argue Le Pergole Torte has never been “cooler” as evidenced by the rapid price escalation since 2015.
All the more reason for consumers not to automatically think of Super Tuscans as one kind of thing, given that many producers, including traditional producers, make a Super Tuscan bottling, and those are really quite different from your modern Bolgheri international type producers.
I was just about to ask if Masseto was considered a SuperTuscan (rhetorically) when I saw your post. A few years ago, at an LBTG dinner, Leo served a series of merlot flights, one of which included two Lafleurs and two second wines of Lafleur. Then there was a flight of SuperTuscan merlots. The Masseto blew away everything else. Not even close. I have had Petrus twice in the past two months and it was not on the same planet as the Masseto. In light of the discussion or Rayas, my SAT analogy would be Grenache is to Rayas as Merlot is to . . . Masseto.
If Masseto is not cool, then I will gladly give up my seat at the Cool Kids table.
Masseto is of course way out of my price range and as such I’ve never owned a bottle. Once, though, courtesy of the copious generosity of a (pre-WB) internet wino at an offline when I was in Atlanta on business, we had one at dinner.
I understand that the rules are being changed so Gran Selezione requires indigenous varieties only, so maybe there is the beginning of a return to sanity in Chianti Classico.
The current rules for both Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva allow about FIFTY grape varieties to be used, including such random names as Teroldego, Schiava and Lambrusco.
Thanks Ian. There were lots of modernizers. In the traditional camp, Beppe Colla (at Prunotto), Alfredo Currado (at Vietti), and Bruno Giacosa all made advancements from earlier ways. The Cerretto brothers, Aldo Conterno, and Gaja started pushing toward a more modern style. So, yes, you are quite right that I glossed over the timing. However, I think the peak explosion of Super Tuscans coincided with the Barolo Boys movement (late 80s-early 2000) and represented the most overt “modernist” period.
I’ve seen Galatrona, Girolama, and Casalferro do well served blind against Pomerol (and ilk). And although not from Tuscany, Montiano has a decent history for quality merlot too.
Some of the IGT craze of the prior era may have also been rationale reactions to the Italian bureaucracy regarding wine. Has that situation improved enough that vintners are willing to return to that set of rules?
