2020 Masseto Toscana 750 ml

With its 100-point score from Decanter, the 2020 Masseto is one of the finest wines ever grown on Masseto’s prized patch of blue clay. “A truly delicious wine with so much purity and sense of place,” wrote the magazine, it’s “a caged animal with its full potential yet to be unveiled.” 

On our last visit to the legendary Ornellaia estate, we were awestruck by the Masseto hill, where vineyards produce some of the most precious and ageworthy wine on the planet. The hill was planted to Merlot in the 1980s at the direction of legendary winemaker André Tchelistcheff, and now, with winemaking overseen by Right Bank Bordeaux guru Michel Rolland, Masseto stands equal to any collectible wine in the world.

In the beginning, Lodovico Antinori’s inspiration for his first Bordeaux-style wine was his own cousin’s Sassicaia. So he set about creating a competitor that would also consist largely of Cabernet Sauvignon.

But his property, Tenuta dell’Ornellaia, had one anomalous 17-acre section: a hilltop that Tchelistcheff knew was ideal not for Cabernet Sauvignon, but for Merlot. Antinori was ambivalent, but finally,  in 1984, he followed Tchelistcheff’s advice. Masseto hill was planted—purely to Merlot.

Early vintages of Masseto won devoted fans and collectors, and under Rolland, the 2001 vintage earned perfect scores from both Wine Spectator and James Suckling. The latter concluded his review by saying: “Enjoy this for the rest of your life.”

Now owned by the Frescobaldi family, little has changed at Masseto. Historically composed of 100% Merlot—but now containing a small portion of Cabernet Franc—this wine is on par with the great First Growths. In every year, it’s a cellar-defining masterpiece. The perfect 2020 exceeds even the loftiest expectations.