Arnione: A new Bolgheri superstar?

Remember the name 'Arnione', says Aldo Fiordelli, who wonders whether the time has come for a new star in Bolgheri to join established names such as Sassicaia, Ornellaia, Tignanello and Masseto.

Founded 20 years ago this June, Campo alla Sughera is a boutique winery in Bolgheri exuding Italian grace underscored by a German sense of consistency. The owner is the Iphofen-based Knauf family, one of the world’s leading producers of ‘drywall’ building material.

Bolgheri is a quintessential Tuscan hamlet found at the end of a three mile long avenue lined with 2,400 cypress trees, those celebrated in the verses of Nobel prize-winning poet Giosuè Carducci.

For centuries, alabaster has been quarried in this part of Tuscany, and in 1998 the Knauf family were looking for a production plant for their plasterboard when Isabel Knauf discovered what she termed ‘a Mediterranean Bordeaux’.

Scroll down to see Aldo’s tasting notes and scores for seven vintages of Arnione

‘Ending up in this beautiful piece of land, close to the most famous Bolgheri wineries, is thanks to the geological studies that we conducted for the construction of our plant in Tuscany. A true stroke of luck!’After two decades, Arnione is now emerging as a top Bolgheri Superiore for at least two reasons:

• Firstly, it is never too extracted, yet is almost always concentrated enough to age for 20 years in the best vintages.
• Secondly, this area of Bolgheri has given birth to three out of the five most renowned Tuscan wines – Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Masseto – which are followed by less recognised wines such as Arnione, whose only sin in outstanding vintages like 2006 or 2015 is that of being lesser known.

The vineyard

Campo alla Sughera have 16.5ha of vines, two-thirds of which lie above the Bolgherese, the road considered the boundary line for producing top quality wines. The soil is predominantly alluvial, with marine deposits in sandy layers over deep-lying gravel and clay.

Knauf and her winemaker, Francesco Gagliardi, selected 15 microsites and 38 different plots, an act both as rare as it is essential in Bolgheri, given that the terroir is less homogeneous in comparison to Bordeaux, for example.

What they do share with the Médoc is the principle of high density planting – here they have planted 9,500 vines per hectare, higher than Bolgheri’s average, and it could almost be criticised as too high for the Mediterranean climate.

‘We don’t need to green harvest our Cabernet Sauvignon at this density,’ says Gagliardi, ‘but it’s crucial for us to contain the yields at a naturally low level, with open clusters and thicker grapes’.

In the winery

The definition of fruit in the wine is the ‘German’ signature of this Bordeaux blend, which is also full of spices due to the 20% Petit Verdot.

Compared to the wines of the right bank, the proportion of this grape variety is dramatically higher, but it shows an outstanding level of phenolic ripeness under the Tuscan sun.

In its first years, Arnione was proposed as 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot and 20% Petit Verdot, but from 2006 they introduced 20% of the increasingly trendy Cabernet Franc.

The extraction is as gentle as possible in order to minimise seed tannins, and fermentation takes place at controlled temperatures of 28-30°C in stainless steel tanks.

Arnione is then racked to 50% new French barriques for malolactic fermentation to increase complexity and texture.

Thus, if power is built in the vineyards, diplomacy is underlined in the cellar, leading to the outstanding grace of this ‘Mediterranean Bordeaux’.

Aldo’s tasting notes and scores for Arnione:

You may also like:

The Luigi Veronelli collection: Italian gems from decades past

Comparing Tignanello and Solaia

Sassicaia wines tasted: 1968 – 2015