2015 Tenuta Le Colonne Bolgheri 750 ml

Superhero Top 5 Consultant Shepherding This Super Tuscan

Bordeaux-style superstars like Sassicaia, Ornellaia, and Tignanello introduced the world to the limitless potential of wines from the Tuscan coast. They also paved the way for gems like the 92-point 2015 Tenuta Le Colonne Bolgheri, an off-the-charts, under-$30 value and bona fide cellar-stocker from one of the world’s top sites for Bordeaux varieties.

Deep-pocketed proprietor Alejandro Bulgheroni’s has a simple recipe for success: Acquire pristine sites, hire top people, and spare no expense: He employs famed winemakers Philippe Melka and Michel Rolland at his flagship estate, and has enlisted their Tuscan counterpart—enologist Alberto Antonini, a Top 5 Wine Consultant according to both The Drinks Business and Decanter—at Tenuta Le Colonne. Le Colonne’s is closer to the coast than any other Bolgheri winery, and that site yields a Bordeaux-style blend that Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate says, “shows the richness and opulence of the vintage with loads of dark, sweet and succulent fruit.”

It’s hard to believe now, but once upon a time, Tuscany’s coastal Maremma region was a winemaking afterthought—regarded well below the wines of Chianti, if it was regarded at all. But the sands have shifted, and breathtakingly beautiful Bolgheri, the winemaking epicenter of the Maremma, is now home to some of the most sought-after wines in Italy—and in some cases, the world. Bordeaux varieties thrive in Bolgheri, where cool offshore breezes from the Tyrrhenian Sea sweep across rocky foothills, counterbalancing the hot Tuscan sun and creating a priceless microclimate: a perfect hybrid of maritime and Mediterranean influences.

Tenuta Le Colonne, as the Bolgheri estate most proximate to the sea, is situated perfectly to enjoy that confluence of conditions. Combining Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon grown in the volcanic sand and clay of the Le Colonne estate, the wine is vinified under the watchful eye of Tuscan maestro Alberto Antonini. After a fermentation with native yeast, the blend is rested for a year in oak, then for three more months in bottle. The result is a stunner of a Super Tuscan: an “opulent” Bordeaux-style blend that does Bolgheri proud.