Ornellaia 2014
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Robert - Decanter
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Blend: 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 20% Petit Verdot, 14% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very floral and fresh with dark berry, lemon rind and hints of cloves and spice. Medium to full body, firm and silky tannins and a pretty finish of fruit, smoke, toasted oak and more spice. Better in 2019. Outstanding for the vintage.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From a cooler, more challenging vintage, the 2014 Ornellaia is nevertheless a beautiful wine. Based on 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 20% Petit Verdot, and the rest Cabernet Franc brought up in 70% new oak, it has classy cassis and black cherry fruits as well as notes of saddle leather, dried flowers, and spicy oak. While it doesn't have the wealth of material found in the 2015 and 2016, it has solid mid-palate depth, beautiful balance, and a great finish. It's a classy, seamless Ornellaia to enjoy over the coming 15+ years or more.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
To be released in May 2017, the 2014 Bolgheri Superiore Ornellaia reverts to a style and personality that we have not seen in a long while. The wine shows a tight, silky and determined approach that reminds us of the Ornellaias made under the estate's previous ownership with the Marchese Lodovico Antinori in the mid-1990s. More than anything else, this has to do with the very unique characteristics of the 2014 growing season. The wine opens to a beautifully saturated and dark appearance. Thanks to the advanced age of the vines and their extensive root systems, fruit quality was well preserved despite the cool summer and late harvest. The wine shows sweet fruit nuances with blackberry and dark currant. Spice, leather and tobacco fill in the rear. The finish reveals just enough of that acidic prickle to assure an easy ten or fifteen year drinking window.
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Decanter
This was one of the most challenging vintages ever in Tuscany, with no exception in Bolgheri. The wine doesn’t lack its characteristic cassis fruit but it shows a leathery, slightly gamey forest-floor complexity of a more immediate style for drinking. Plum and clove flavours are sustained by grainy tannins with a slightly green finish, accompanied by balancing acidity and relatively low alcohol at 13.5%.
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Wine Enthusiast
Toast, underbrush, tobacco leaf and cassis aromas lead the nose. Reflecting the cool wet vintage, the palate is austere and lighter bodied than usual but still elegant, offering raw cherry, pomegranate, licorice and ground pepper alongside tight close-grained tannins. Give the tannins several more years to unwind.
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Wine Spectator
Starts out with aromas of black currant and cherry, followed by flavors of herb, tobacco, iron and spice. Turns dense and tannic in the end. Elegant and complex overall, but this needs to resolve the tannins and integrate the oak. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. Best from 2018 through 2025.
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In 1981, Marchese Lodovico Antinori breathed new life into Tenuta dell' Ornellaia, an estate whose potential had been ignored for decades. With the help of Andre Tchelistcheff, the famous agronomist, Antinori planted the first French vines in Bolgheri, which lies in the heart of Tuscany's coastal region, Maremma. The estate yields some of the finest Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc in Tuscany. In 2002, Marchesi de' Frescobaldi and Robert Mondavi became owners of Tenuta dell'Ornellaia, which is now owned exclusively by Marchesi de' Frescobaldi.
Ornellaia has established itself among the iconic wine estates in Italy (and beyond). The estate is dedicated to producing charming and opulent wines, full of Mediterranean character and finesse, reflecting the estate’s unique terroir in Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast. The combination of Bolgheri’s unique soils and growing conditions, and what can only be characterized as a total obsession with excellence, result in the world-class wines from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc that so many wine lovers across the world have come to cherish.
Ornellaia employs a full time team of 80 people whose passion and motivation make Ornellaia what it is today. No shortcuts in the part of the production are allowed and the details literally come down to a grape by grape basis. Wines are intently crafted to capture the character of each vintage, in all its complexity and facets. In fact, the character and intricacies of each individual vintage are so important to the estate that since vintage 2006, Winemaker and Estate Director Axel Heinz has identified a single word that captures the character of each vintage, and that word is interpreted by a contemporary artist who produces special labels and a site-specific work of art that remains part of the estate’s permanent collection.
In addition to its place among Italy’s iconic wines, Ornellaia is also an ambassador for the Bolgheri region, leading it to be recognized as one of Italy’s greatest winegrowing regions. It is their belief, and it is hard to argue, that Bogheri’s mild maritime climate and diversity of soils create wines as distinct, complex and pleasurable as any in the world.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
An outstanding wine region made famous by Marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, who planted Cabernet Sauvignon vines for his own consumption in 1940s on his San Guido estate, and called the resulting wine, Sassicaia. Today the region’s Tuscan reds are based on Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, which can be made as single varietal wines or blends. The local Sangiovese can make up no more than 50% of the blends. Today Sassicaia has its own DOC designation within the Bogheri DOC appellation.