David Williams reports on the launch of 2023 Ornellaia.
To lose one member of your senior team might be considered unfortunate. Losing two, to borrow from Oscar Wilde, starts to look a little like carelessness. But what about three? And in the same year?
For Lamberto Frescobaldi, president of Tenuta dell’Ornellaia, this difficult—and potentially rather embarrassing—scenario threatened to make 2023 his annus horribilis.
The troubles began in March 2023, with the announcement, to industry-wide surprise, that Ornellaia’s experienced and much-admired estate director Axel Heinz had decided to swap Bolgheri for Bordeaux, leaving Ornellaia (and sister estate Masseto) behind, after 18 years, to take up a position at Margaux second growth Château Lascombes. He would be leaving to take up his new position that summer.
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Then, in August, Heinz’s colleague, Ornellaia winemaker Olga Fusari—who, like Heinz, had joined the estate in 2005—said she, too, had found new pastures, having been poached by Chianti big gun Ruffino to oversee its new Bolgheri project, Garzaia.
Finally, in September 2023, Ornellaia CEO Giovanni Geddes da Filicaja—whose career at Ornellaia predated Fusari and Heinz—completed the trio of departures, announcing his retirement after 24 years at the helm.
From the outside, it’s hard to gauge just how much of a shock this exodus would have been to Frescobaldi. He certainly seems unruffled, affectionate even, when recalling Heinz’s contributions to the estate at the launch of the 2023 vintage of Ornellaia at restaurant Konstantin Filippou in Vienna in February. Maybe it all happened as smoothly and happily as any such change can; or maybe time has soothed and healed any wounds. But whatever Frescobaldi might feel now (and his gentlemanly manners would in any case seem to preclude any expression of irritation), the departures seemed to signal the end of what had been a relatively serene period at the Bolgheri estate in the years after the Frescobaldi family had assumed complete control of both Ornellaia and sister estate Masseto by buying out the remaining 50% stake held by US drinks giant Constellation in 2015.
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Since then, a plan to separate operations at the two estates had progressed nicely, with Masseto getting its own cellar in 2019. The wines, too, had moved with the times, refining and freshening without losing their essential, sun-filled warmth and power. Demand and secondary-market pricing was healthy, as good as it had ever been. The benefits of having a single, stable ownership, shorn of any conflicts or differences of ambition, were clearly apparent. By the beginning of 2023, by all accounts, Ornellaia was set fair.
2023: New vitality?
One could not say the same for the 2023 growing season, however, which threatened to add to Frescobaldi’s burden. It was, as the notes shared by Ornellaia in Vienna concede, “a challenging vintage in Bolgheri.” The winter was mild, with above average temperatures, but spring was unusually wet, and the battle with the rampant downy mildew that ensued was not one from which all producers in the region emerged unscathed. The summer provided its own problems in the form of sustained dry, hot weather, but the season was rescued thanks to some timely late August rain and cool September nights.
By this stage, Frescobaldi had also resolved his main staffing issue, with the appointment of Italian Marco Balsimelli as technical director. Rather neatly, Balsimelli was traveling in the opposite direction to Heinz: Having trained as a winemaker in Florence, he had been working with Eric Boissenot in Bordeaux for 17 years by the time he accepted Frescobaldi’s offer.
Balsimelli oversaw much of the élevage of the 2023 vintage and can therefore take much of the credit for its rather surprising (given the heat of the year) energy, freshness, polish, and poise. It’s a wine that fully merits the single thematic term the estate has chosen to sum up the vintage: la vitalità—vitality. As the first fine fruits of a new era, it might even persuade Frescobaldi to look back on 2023 as an annus mirabilis.
Vendemmia d’Artista: La Vitalità
The latest artist to collaborate on Ornellaia’s long-running Vendemmia d’Artista project is the Serbian conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović.
Working within the theme of la vitalità, Abramović’s project, which includes a self-portrait in the guise of Medusa, “explores the theme of self, understood as an act of awareness and determination in capturing one’s own image,” the estate said. “[The artwork] reflects on the ability to regenerate oneself through art and to regain strength and vitality.”
As part of Vendemmia d’Artista, a selection of the unique large formats will be auctioned online by Bonhams, June 11–23, with proceeds supporting the Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation and its exhibition Guggenheim Pop (New York, June 2026 to January 2027). This continues Ornellaia’s long-standing commitment to making art accessible as a shared cultural heritage.
Tasting
2023 Ornellaia Bolgheri DOC Superiore (55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, 7% Petit Verdot)
The phrase Ornellaia would like us to have in mind as we taste the 2023 is vitality, and that does indeed seem to be part of its charm. There is so much life and vigor—a real feeling of momentum—in a wine that is delightfully ready to drink. Plump, polished, silk-sheet soft, and full of tumbling, soft black berries and cherries, it’s also exceptionally fresh, saline, sappy, and energetic, but with the density and structure for many years of evolution. | 96
