Wine of the week: a perfect and thrilling tightrope routine
This is a delicious and well-thought-through wine with delicacy and considerable richness in perfect harmony.
2018 Poggio alle Gazze dell’Ornellaia, Tuscany, Italy
£41.68, armitwines.co.uk
Winemaker Olga Fusari pulled off a perfect tightrope routine when she made this wonderful wine. Ornellaia is famous for making one of the most expensive and collectable of all Super-Tuscan reds, but this 2018 vintage of its unusual white blend is a thriller. Made from 83% sauvignon blanc, 11% vermentino and 6% viognier, this is a full-bodied white wine. It not only tastes amazing, but also carries with it a sense of true vinous skill and innate balance. The 2018 was, if you look at the climatic conditions, a rather rainy vintage, at least for the first half of the year. Rainy years often give rise to dilute crops, but the sun shone in the second half of the summer and cool nights ensued, so this wine has fleshiness, levity and also crucial acidity.
MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
If you are trying to guess what this wine tastes like, you will not be able to do it from the grapes involved, let alone their percentage involvement in this blend! Rather think of them as a layer cake, led by sensual and provocative viognier, followed by herbal, saline vermentino and then powered on for minutes by part-oak-fermented and aged sauvignon blanc. Half of this wine sees barriques and half again is new oak. This component allows the palate and finish of this wine to puff out its chest and strut its stuff. This is a delicious and well-thought-through wine with delicacy and considerable richness in perfect harmony. It never oversteps the mark, while retaining its lush, citrus and tropical fruit allure ,and that makes it ever so captivating and thoroughly worthy of its Ornellaia label.
Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com)
Get the latest financial news, insights and expert analysis from our award-winning MoneyWeek team, to help you understand what really matters when it comes to your finances.
Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.
Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.
He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.
Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.
Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.
-
Number of high-earning women jumps 12% – how to convert income into pensionsMore women than ever are paying the highest rate of tax as record numbers succeed in high paying professional roles. But their pension saving still needs to catch up
-
Yoshiaki Murakami: Japan’s original corporate raiderThe originator of Japanese activism, Yoshiaki Murakami, was disgraced by an insider-trading scandal in 2006. Now, he's back, shaking things up
-
8 of the best smallholdings for sale nowThe best smallholdings for sale – from a medieval cross-passage farmhouse in Taunton, Somerset, to a former farmhouse with an orchard in the Welsh Marches
-
Review: Waldorf Astoria Dubai International Financial Centre – explore a city of Arabian delightsTravel The Waldorf Astoria Dubai International Financial Centre is a great base from which to set out on a foodie adventure of the emirate
-
Albert Einstein's first violin sells for £860,000 at auctionAlbert Einstein left his first violin behind as he escaped Nazi Germany. Last week, it became the most expensive instrument not owned by a concert violinist
-
Last orders: can UK pubs be saved?Pubs in Britain are closing at the rate of one a day, continuing and accelerating a long-term downward trend. Why? And can anything be done to save them?
-
Review: Grove of Narberth – a warm welcome in WalesTravel Grove of Narberth is a rustic and charming country retreat in Pembrokeshire all the year round
-
Review: The Hut, Colwell Bay – a seafood lunch with a holiday feelTravel Getting to The Hut in Colwell Bay on the Isle of Wight is almost as rewarding as actually eating there
-
Pinewood Technologies: a drive for growthPinewood Technologies’ platform is one of the best in the business. Investors should buy in
-
'EV maker Faraday Future will crash'Faraday Future Intelligent Electric is failing dismally to live up to its name, says Matthew Partridge
