2019 Tenuta Luce Lucente Toscana Tuscany 750 ml

After helping launch Napa into the stratosphere and partnering with Baron Philippe de Rothschild to create Opus One, Robert Mondavi turned his attention toward his family’s native Italy, partnering with the legendary Frescobaldi clan to create Luce della Vite.

That partnership has become Italy’s version of Opus One, producing wines that are among the richest and most monumental in the country. Their flagship, Luce, a Super Tuscan blend of Sangiovese and Merlot, has become synonymous with staggering concentration and power, racking up 98- and 97-point scores.

Sporting the same voluptuous blend as Luce, made from the same high-elevation vineyards by the same renowned team, Lucente is one of the best values in Super Tuscans every year.

If Luce is a Napa Cabernet drinker’s Super Tuscan, Lucente is its more classically Italian younger brother, defined by litheness and energy married to the estate’s characteristic intensity. The Sangiovese and Merlot hail from some of the highest slopes in Montalcino, which border on Frescobaldi’s Castelgiocondo, home to some of the area’s finest Brunellos. The two grapes are fermented separately and see 12 months in a mix of new and older wooden barriques, resulting in a less oaky expression than Luce.

Just as Baron Philippe had found California’s quintessential producer in Mondavi, Mondavi found the perfect partner for his Italian project in the Frescobaldi family, whose Tuscan roots go back to the 1300s. Frescobaldi patriarch Vittorio saw a kindred spirit in the iconoclastic Mondavi—whose parents had moved from Le Marche to America in the early part of the 20th century—and so Luce della Vite was born.