Here's what the new vintage of Ornellaia is like. The key word: determination

"We are very happy. We have built a new team with highly experienced professionals of international calibre. Quality must be pursued with humility, always questioning oneself," Lamberto Frescobaldi tells us, "and the results follow." Ferdinando and Lamberto, together with the estate’s production director, Marco Balsimelli, and oenologist Denise Cosentino, have presented the new vintage of Ornellaia, the 2022, which will soon be on the market. As has been the tradition for seventeen years now, a word has been chosen to encapsulate the essence of the vintage. "For 2022, the word is Determination," Lamberto explains, "both in terms of the determination of the technical team to achieve the result—such an expressive wine—and the determination of the Ornellaia vines to react to extreme conditions, where the plants have shown great resilience."

"It’s a vintage we will remember for its heat and drought," Balsimelli adds. "It was the driest in recent years from February to July, impacting vine vigour, resulting in less robust growth than usual, with fewer leaves, smaller berries, and smaller clusters. This led to a 15% decrease in production compared to the average, altering the ratio of skin to pulp. The result was concentrated, rich wines. Then, fortunately, in August and September, rain arrived to save the vintage: the metabolism of the vines restarted, allowing the ripening process to finish. Two extreme conditions that, in a way, balanced each other out. In the end, we achieved a fresh acidic profile: it’s hard to tell by the nose that it was such a hot vintage. There are aromas of red fruits and apple that don’t suggest over-ripeness. In short, the technical team did a great job, but so did the terroir."

The wine presents itself with notable acidity, tones of fresh red fruits, and concentrated yet generous tannins, the result of low yields but a delicate extraction. It is a compact, focused, and characterful wine. The final blend is led by Cabernet Sauvignon at 55%, with 25% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc, and an unusually high 10% Petit Verdot.

"In 2022, the direction was still that of Axel Heinz, with Olga Fusari as oenologist," Denise Cosentino explains. "I arrived at Ornellaia in January 2024, and in February, we made the final blend. It wasn’t easy, but we had 77 different parcel wines to work with, which made for an exciting challenge. We are very happy with the result."

In short, a demanding vintage, coming at a transitional phase from one technical team to another, made easier by the guidance of international consultants who have been working with Ornellaia for years—Michel Rolland and Julien Viaud of the Rolland Consulting Lab. The wine matured for 18 months in barrels, 70% of which were new (the remainder second-use), with delicate toasting from various forests and cooperages. It was then aged for a further year in the bottle.

The tasting of the 2022 was followed by a retrospective of four other vintages, culminating in a spectacular jeroboam of Ornellaia 1997, enjoyed during a delicious dinner prepared by Andrea Zazzeri and the team from La Pineta in Bibbona. Spectacular, just as the 2022 will undoubtedly be in a few years, and just as this preview already was.

The vertical tasting

2022
95/100
Deep ruby, aromas of red and black fruits, hints of tobacco, spice, smokiness, a lovely touch of freshly cut grass, with blueberry and blackcurrant juice intertwining. The palate is rich, tannic, and fresh, offering plenty of crunchy red fruit and finesse, with sweet yet well-structured tannins. It has savouriness, tension, juiciness, a fine smoky tone, balsamic nuances, and tobacco notes, finishing with a youthful yet silky astringency. A vertical, savoury, rich wine with great body and a long future ahead. The tannins are abundant, the acidity well-balanced, with a beautiful return of fruit and aromatic herbs. A wine of character, still a little tight, but with perfectly ripened Cabernet Sauvignon.

2015
96/100
A textbook vintage with ideal weather conditions. Deep ruby, the nose is rich, balsamic, and delicately herbaceous, with a bouquet of aromatic herbs, red fruit, and spices—particularly white pepper. On the palate, the extraordinary finesse of the tannic structure stands out, with beautiful notes of Mediterranean scrub, cigar box, and red and blackcurrants. The palate offers calibrated astringency, refinement, body, and elegance. An incredibly long finish, delicately smoky, with persistent red fruit and an elegant trail of aromatic herbs. A Bordeaux-style wine with Mediterranean flair, destined for a long life.

2011
94/100
Still an intense, deep ruby. A sunny, early vintage, one of the most advanced harvests of the past twenty years, ending in August. A mild winter, sunny but not overly hot, gifted Ornellaia with a lovely fresh acidity and dynamic energy. The wine is still youthful and compact, just beginning to open up, with layers of red and black fruit, menthol, and balsamic notes. The tannins are incredibly fine, with a delicate hint of freshly cut hay. The palate is elegant, fruity, and progressively vibrant, with beautiful freshness. A long finish where the fruit fades into delicate menthol notes, controlled by harmonious astringency.

2005
96/100
Finally, after twenty years, a hint of maturity—betrayed in the colour by a faint garnet reflection at the rim, though the core remains a deep ruby. 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 14% Cabernet Franc, and a small percentage of Petit Verdot. A red with a Bordeaux-like balance, delicately smoky on the nose, with crunchy red and black fruit, Cuban cigar notes, and truly captivating balsamic hints. On the palate, sweet, creamy tannins, followed by ripe wild berries, savouriness, tension, finesse, and intensity, with lovely crispness. More than 50 parcels contributed to the final cuvée. A wine of character—fleshy, delicately astringent, vertical, and smoky—entering a complex evolutionary phase, where spices emerge alongside a very Bordeaux-like mentholated finish. Harmonious with extraordinary persistence.

2001
98/100
Paradoxically, the colour is less evolved than the 2005 vintage. A truly great wine, with everything one expects from a top-tier mature red. A climatically perfect vintage, with good rainfall, a cold spring, and generous yields that were controlled through thinning. Then, a dry summer leading up to harvest. A vertical, expansive, deep, and tense wine, with aromas of bouquet garni, rosemary, and Mediterranean scrub, followed by juicy red fruit—cherry, but especially blackcurrant and blackberry—fine and dense, with incredibly elegant tannins. Dynamic, vibrant, and pristine, it fades into complex notes of cedarwood, balanced beautifully with its oak tones. Interminable…

1997
97/100
The large format aids in ageing, but what a wine! The jeroboam reveals an opaque, dense ruby colour with a hint of garnet at the rim. Rich and intense on the nose—"old school," with a 90s-style nod to the New World rather than Bordeaux, but only at first… Lots of ripe fruit, especially blackberry and blackcurrant, followed by Cuban tobacco, cedar, and an enticing smoky tone. If it was born "dreaming of California," at 27 years old, it is wonderfully expressive, with its settled tension, smoky fireplace tones, undergrowth, and porcini mushroom notes. The warmth of the vintage is evident in the ripe cherry, blackberry, and marasca cherry, yet it is lifted by a captivating menthol and balsamic freshness. On the palate, it is velvety—embracing and muscular yet refined. It finishes long and seductive, with endless notes of cut hay, tobacco, spice, and intense Mediterranean scrub that seem to never fade.