2023 Ornellaia Bolgheri Superiore 750 ml

There are good vintages of Ornellaia. There are great ones. And then, every so often, there are the ones that get talked about for decades—the benchmarks that define what Bolgheri can be at its absolute finest. The 2023 is one of those.

Wine Advocate, who awarded it 98 points, called it meticulously made, with impressive richness and concentration, a botanical complexity on the nose, and a velvety, expansive succulence on the palate. It is, the reviewer concluded, a vintage that captures its year with remarkable elegance.

It also happens to be the first Ornellaia made under the direction of Marco Balsimelli, who took over as Technical Director following Axel Heinz’s celebrated tenure at the estate. Balsimelli oversees production at both Ornellaia and its neighbor Masseto—two of the most scrutinized addresses in all of Italian wine. A new chapter, then. And one that begins with an emphatic bang.

The estate sits on a sliver of Tuscan coastline in Bolgheri, where the Mediterranean tempers the heat, sea breezes move through the vines, and a mosaic of ancient soils—clay, limestone, sand—gives the wine its unmistakable layered character. The Marchese Incisa della Rocchetta planted the first vines here in the early 1980s, following a hunch that this quiet corner of the Tyrrhenian coast could produce something genuinely great. He was right. Today, Ornellaia is one of the most celebrated estates in all of Italy, a benchmark not just for Bolgheri but for the whole country.

The 2023 is a blend of 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot, 12% Cab Franc, and 7% Petit Verdot—a composition that reflects the estate’s Bordeaux roots while leaning fully into its coastal Italian identity. Wine Advocate described the nose as botanical and complex, marked by dark fruit, Mediterranean thyme and rosemary. On the palate, the texture is velvety and polished, with a succulence that feels expansive and a freshness that keeps everything in balance.