Winemaker Notes
Cont’Ugo 2022 is an intense ruby red color. The nose offers smooth notes of small ripe red fruit especially currants, raspberries and ripe cherries accompanied by light hints of Mediterranean scrub and forest floor. The palate delivers good structure, excellent persistence of flavors and a pleasant fruity finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Distinctly fruity, this red features black cherry, blackberry, plum, licorice, cedar and oak spice aromas and flavors. A supple version, with terrific balance and a long aftertaste. Shows just enough grip to lend serious weight. Merlot.
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James Suckling
This is a wonderfully polished and creamy red. Notes of chocolate biscuits, dark plums, cloves and dark cherries on the nose, as well as some graphite, followed by a full-bodied, plush and supple palate. Merlot. Drink now or hold.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Taking on a deep red/magenta hue, the 2022 Cont'Ugo features dusty cedar, fruit leather, baking spice, and fresh earth aromas. Full-bodied, it displays a gamey richness, with chewy tannins and a fleshy quality throughout. A plush texture and a graceful tapering finish complement its weightless feel.
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Vinous
The 2022 Cont'Ugo, 100% Merlot, offers terrific freshness, especially for the year. There's a bit of edginess in the tannin from the challenges of the growing season. Even so, what comes through most is the move toward greater vibrancy in the wines.
The Guado al Tasso Estate is located in the prestigious Bolgheri DOC, part of the Tuscan coastal area of Maremma, known for its untamed landscape and unspoiled beauty. Just 60 miles southwest of Florence, it sits on a magnificent plain in the heart of the Bolgheri amphitheater, a natural phenomenon created by hills that embrace the sea and produce a mild and temperate microclimate. Blessed with ample sunshine and constant breezes that take the edge off the summer heat and winter cold, Guado al Tasso is the ideal environment for cultivating healthy vine growth and proper ripening of the estate’s grapes. Inherited from Carlotta della Gherardesca, and revolutionized by Niccoló Antinori, the mother and father of Piero Antinori, Guado al Tasso is a reference point property in the life and history of the family. Here the challenge is to create wines of absolute excellence, always representative of the Bolgheri history, culture, and winemaking traditions.
With generous fruit and supple tannins, Merlot is made in a range of styles from everyday-drinking to world-renowned and age-worthy. Merlot is the dominant variety in the wines from Bordeaux’s Right Bank regions of St. Emilion and Pomerol, where it is often blended with Cabernet Franc to spectacular result. Merlot also frequently shines on its own, particularly in California’s Napa Valley. Somm Secret—As much as Miles derided the variety in the 2004 film, Sideways, his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc is actually a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
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.