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Here is another overview of a group of wines from a Winevestor perspective – the Super Tuscans from Bolgheri. One of the reasons that there are very few investment wines in Italy, is that they don’t tend to last. The Piedmont wines are an exception. So what do you do, when you are Italian winemaker and your wines are selling well for drinking, but you aren’t able to sell to the investment market and the higher prices that enables? You look at the best investment wines, Bordeaux, and you recreate them in your vineyards and then give them a local twist. This somewhat cynical approach has been very successful with the Super Tuscans.
Super Tuscans started off with Sassicaia. In 1940, in Tuscany, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta started planting Cabernet Sauvignon. Initially a wine was produced for the family but then in 1968 it was realized to the public. The early reviewers were ecstatic and a genre, which others quickly emulated, was born. Today Sassicaia is mainly Cabernet Sauvignon with some Cabernet Franc. A few years later Piero Antinori, a nephew of Mario, and intimately involved with Sassicaia, was struggling with the rules of Chianti Classico. Chianti’s in the early 1970s had to consist of 30% white grapes such Malvasia or Trebbiano. As a result the wines had become weak, overly acid and did not age well. Antinori, spurned on by the success of his uncle, bucked the system and created his own wine Tignanello which was 85 percent Sangiovese and 15 percent Cabernet (Sauvignon and Franc). Thus was born the two very different types of Super Tuscan wines: Bordeaux blend and Chianti improvement. It is therefore very important to know the varietal make-up of Super Tuscans as they cast a wide net. The Bolgheri DOC, which was designed to cater to the new Super Tuscans, can have 10% to 80% Cabernet, up-to 80% Merlot, and Sangiovese up-to 70%!
Since the birth of the Super Tuscans they have had a spectacular arc until the early 2000s. They were largely designed for the US market and were coddled in oak barriques and inevitably were fruit driven. The marketing guys did a wonderful job and just like celebrities who only have a single name they created single name wines typically ending in –aia. These included the original Sassicaia, followed by Solaia, Ornellaia and Lupicaia. Interestingly the Italian market-maker is not the Wine Advocate but the Wine Spectator. James Suckling covers the area and although number 2 in Bordeaux is number 1 in Italy.
Are the Super Tuscans IGW? David Sokolin in his book ‘Investing in Liquid Assets’ states that people buy Super Tuscans by brand and not by vintage, and they will buy the lowest price example. . He goes onto say that ‘I’m not convinced personally that they’re great investments, despite their pedigree…’. Indeed, today Super Tuscans are struggling. The world has moved on from fruit-forward wines and is looking for terroir wines using indigenous grapes. There are two articles that outline this current state, both entitled ‘Are Super Tuscans Still Super?’. They both end with the same answer, which is no. Lettie Teague in Food and Wine identifies the issues as wines being sold at too high a price, aping another region’s wine and being sold to a specific market segment. She concludes that it is not surprising that these wines are no longer the hot commodity they were. Eric Asimov in the NYTimes covered the same ground but focused on the wines that started off trying to fix the problems with Chianti. They have had a profound affect and the Chianti of today is much better for it, and more in keeping with the traditional varietals of the region. The Chianti DOC rules, or DOCG as they became in 1984, have now been amended to allow a broader range of grapes. The current version amended in 2006 for Chianti Classico is 75 to 100% Sangiovese, up to 10% Canaiolo and 20% of other approved red grape types such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. There are no white grapes allowed.
Another great article which covers the whole stat e of the Super-Tuscan world was in the World of Fine Wine. One of the anomalies of Super Tuscans is that some of the top collecting wines are 100% merlot. They include Masseto, Messorio and Redigaffi. The article suggests that Tuscany is no place for Merlot and that it jams up the wines it is in. However, it is undeniable, that the top wines are dominated by the Merlots as outlined below. The big caveat is that, as you can see, the Merlot producers have only been creating their wines for just under twenty years. Whether they a champion or a contender is yet to be determined. As stated earlier, like Grange in Australia and d’Yquem in Sauternes, Sassicaia is the only sure-fire IGW in the region.
Here are the wines that are worth looking at for investment purposes. Note the famous Tignanello, Solaia, Solengo and Oreno are not among them.
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