2018 Isole e Olena “Cepparello” Toscana Rosso IGT, Tuscany, Italy.
Paolo De Marchi’s all estate grown, from the best selection of Chianti Classico grapes, Cepparello IGT Toscana Rosso is wonderfully perfumed and elegant, with the Sangiovese driving the wine with red berry, cherry, plum and strawberry fruits on the full bodied palate, along with anise, sweet tobacco feaf, minty sage, spiced cedar and vanilla notes. This 2018, with the added age, feels and flows seamlessly and has excellent length adding dried flowers and mocha notes to the core of fruit, which lingers on in the glass. This gorgeous all Sangiovese is a deep garnet in the glass and I love the aromatics, it is opulent, but has remarkable clarity and poise, drinking more Burgundy like than one would imagine, with a velvety mouth feel, silken tannin and sublime balance. My last review of Isole e Olena was their 2015 Chianti Classico, their full DOCG estate wine, that is 85% Sangiovese, so it was really cool to compare to the 100% percent Sangiovese Cepparello offering, from one of Tuscany’s top estates. This wine perfectly went with a range of cuts, of grilled steak, with some only seeing Florentine style salt and pepper with an olive oil glaze and others that were marinated in different spices and sauce combinations, it proved an excellent choice with the meaty dishes. A big thank you to Aaron Watty, winemaker at his Big Tar Wines, and assistant winemaker at Joyce Winery in Arroyo Seco, who generously wanted to celebrate his birthday by sharing this wine with his friends and colleagues. Watty, who makes a Sangiovese based red, had this wine many times, first had it as a sommelier in New York City, with an early 1990s vintage that always stayed with him.
The famous Cepparello, Isole e Olena’s signature wine, represents the best this Chianti Classico estate has to offer, and is an outstanding bottle. The Cepparello is crafted with a selection of grapes from the best vines, and most sunny and windy vineyards on the estate, which allows for sublime ripening and retaining fresh acidity, with a preference for well-drained soils, with Tuscan “galestro” and limestone adding to the class and complexity. It is fermented in conic French oak cask, using 100% de-stemmed berries and after a few weeks of maceration It then ages for 18 months in a combination of French oak barriques, some new, plus tonneaux and big casks that are used wood, with a further year of resting in bottle. It is the result of a long selection process, that the winery says, began many years ago, and one that is regularly updated, of which only the most promising grapes are used for the creation of this wine. The Cepparello is a wine that continues to evolve and grow in stature with age, and the winery notes that it is terroir driven and is a wine that exists in perfect harmony and shows a dialogue with the vineyard. Initially, the wine was the result of a bold break with tradition, because once it was considered almost impossible to create a wine from 100% Sangiovese grapes, much the same as Montevertine’s iconic Le Pergole Torte, and to this day it still bears only the IGT label. The Cepparello was crafted for the first time in 1980 and continues to be one of the region’s best and most desirable wines. I highly recommend this vintage in particular, but anything from Isole e Olena, which is located midway between Florence and Siena, in the hills of San Donato in Poggio, the heart of Chianti Classico, and it is a label to look for.
($95 Est.) 96 Points, grapelive