Merlot Blind Tasting: Italy Rises To The Top

A small blind tasting last Friday in Tuscany of some of the best merlot-based reds in the world highlighted how Italy may now be making some of the best bottles on earth from the coveted grape, with the top wines of the tasting all Italian. The wines placing first, second and third were the Bertinga Toscana Volta di Bertinga 2019, Le Vigne di Zamó Merlot Friuli Colli Orientali Vigne Cinquant’Anni 2019 and Roberto Voerzio Merlot Langhe Pissota 2018, respectively. The new merlot from Sette Ponti, Tenuta Sette Ponti Merlot Toscana Sette 2019, came in fourth.

Heres, a Tuscan wine importer and distributor, organized the tasting in its offices in Terranuova Bracciolini. The tasters included myself, a few wine merchants and a handful of Italian winemakers. Each participant at the tasting was asked to rank the 18 wines, which were placed in bags on the table and tasted blind. The results were then grouped together to form a final order of preference.

Of course, the small tasting of reds from Bordeaux’s Right Bank and Italy, mostly Tuscany, is not conclusive, but it does give an indication that Italian merlots compete with some of the best in the world. The tasting included Pomerol’s Petrus, Le Pin and L’Eglise-Clinet. It also suggests that Tuscany no longer has a monopoly on producing great merlot in Italy, with two of the top wines coming from Friuli and Piedmont.

The top Pomerols were all from the 2018 vintage, a hot and rather exotic vintage for Bordeaux. So, this is probably why so many of the tasters gravitated to merlots from the 2019 in Tuscany, which was a much cooler grape-growing season. The wines were more linear and refined. Many of the wine tasters confused the big and rich Pomerols for Italian.

I must admit that I was as surprised with the No. 1 choice of the tasting as almost everyone else in the room. The Bertinga Volta di Bertinga 2019 is a pure merlot from Chianti Classico that has only been made since 2015, although it comes from vineyards that were originally part of the famous Chianti Classico and merlot maker Castello di Ama. Ama arguably put merlot on the fine wine map with Ornellaia (Masseto), making great bottles from the grape in the 1980s.

The 17 hectares of Bertinga vineyards, like Ama, are in the Gaiole area of Chianti Classico, and Volta di Bertinga is a small single vineyard of about 2.45 hectares at an altitude of 380 meters above sea level and facing northeast. The winery and vineyard are the property of two of the owners of Simple, the largest fine wine importer in Russia.

“It’s easy to understand why it was the favorite wine of the tasting,” said Roberto Voerzio, one of the best winemakers in Italy who is known for his legendary Barolos, although his merlot from Langhe came in third. “It was the most fresh and precise of all the wines.

It was my favorite wine along with Petrolo Valdarno di Sopra Galatrona 2019 and the San Giusto a Rentennano Merlot Toscana La Ricolma 2019. I rated them all 99 points. I had to make a choice for my top pick though, so I singled out the Volta di Bertinga, which was wine No. 1 in Flight C. There were four flights of wine, and they were all served blind.

The ratings below are my scores from the tasting. I left out the bottle of 2018 Masseto because it was corked.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman