2018 Ornellaia Le Serre Nuove dell’Ornellaia Bolgheri Rosso Tuscany 750 ml

Ornellaia: Often referred to as “Italy’s First Growth,” the name stirs the heart and makes even the toughest critics go weak at the knees. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate classifies it as “monumental,” while Vinous founder Antonio Galloni wrote that Ornellaia’s wines “have never failed to literally send shivers down my spine.”  

Two decades ago, the legendary Super Tuscan introduced Le Serre Nuove. Made from the same estate vineyards by the same extraordinary winemaking team, it’s technically Ornellaia’s “second wine”—but if a Super Tuscan of this kind of quality came from another estate, we’d simply call it a competitor.

The best-ever 2018 bottling shows why James Suckling calls Le Serre Nuove “excellent, sometimes implausibly good for a second wine.” Displaying its priceless pedigree in every sip, it earned a 95-96 point score, offering its 97-98-point big brother (and some of the other bold-faced names of Tuscany) a little healthy rivalry—especially considering that it’s priced at just $68.

Wine Access members are head over heels for Le Serre Nuove, with the last two vintages earning some of the best ratings we’ve ever seen, over 4.6 out of five stars. You simply can’t go wrong with this wine, especially with its history of out-scoring comparable reds from Grand Cru Classé estates like Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Haut-Brion. 

Beautifully complex, this 2017 Le Serre Nuove shows an attractive dark purple-ruby color. It’s got restrained but complex aromas of black currant, Damson plum, graphite, fresh and dried herbs, and fragrant cedar, leading to black cherry and blackberry fruit on the palate, balanced by a beautifully taut texture. The flavors evolve to reveal notes of pipe tobacco, fresh mushroom, and a hint of dried sage. Showing plenty of depth now, it will reward a couple of years in the cellar—and at this price, you can track its evolution without breaking the bank. 

Located south of the famed cypress-lined avenue of Bolgheri, the Ornellaia estate drips with pedigree. The original Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc vines here were planted by the legendary Russian-born enologist André Tchelistcheff, who told then-owner Lodovico Antinori that the property was a viticultural “El Dorado.” Today, the vines are tended by Axel Heinz, “one of the world’s most in-demand winemakers” according to Antonio Galloni. For the Le Serre Nuove, Heinz selects fruit from younger vines and leans more on Merlot, resulting in a fresher, more elegant profile that drinks beautifully out of the gate.

A blend of 33% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, the 2018 Le Serre Nuove was hand-harvested into small 15-kilogram boxes, then sorted manually and optically before crush. The components spent 15 months in 25% new and 75% one-year-old French oak.

After three more months aging in bottle, the 2018 Le Serre Nuove is a Super Tuscan that refuses to be outshined by any other—no matter the price, and no matter the estate.