As we have already anticipated, our most important Red Wines, Atis and Jassarte 2014 will not be in trade. We would have start to sale them in the next few months, with the presentation at Vinitaly.
2014 was a very difficult harvest in our territory. Fortunately it is rare for Bolgheri, but sometimes such vintages can happen.
What is a difficult vintage? It is a year in which the adverse climatic events add up so much that they do not allow the origination of the particular characteristics , to give birth to those Selection Wines where the „Spirit of the Place“ manifests itself in all its magnificence. 2014 was one of these.
It was a year without our beautiful summer, replaced by a gray sky of almost continuous humidity, finished with a harvest in the rain. The best of the grapes, which we took care of and selected with meticulous work in the vineyard, has deserved to produce good wines of great finesse, our basic red wines, but not the Selections wines.
For me wine is absolutely terroir-expressive, which means to put yourself at the service of territory, to facilitate a transformation that always surprises you. A great wine of territory is something that you can not fully understand even when it is born, because it does not stop changing and transforming itself in the passing time.
Wine, naturally, is not only born in the vineyard but also in the cellar. The absolute care of our work and the choices made in one and the other area are fundamental. But one thing is the care that leads to enhance the qualities, one thing is to want to alter them.
Such difficult vintages, for the great selection reds, are not „saved“ by intervening in the cellar. You can make them technically perfect with a lot of practices, but you can not bring out that something more and better („that soul„) that simply does not exist in the grapes. It is not a matter of knowing how to do it or not.
In my opinion, having a great technical ability in making wine does not mean intervening at any cost, but rather being able to understand when it is better to stop. I have too much respect for Atis and Jassarte to mistreat them in this way.
Making this choice is never easy for a wine producer. We live from this work, we feel the responsibility towards our children, our collaborators and their families. In this period of emptiness there are those who will forget our great reds, who will replace them with others. Patience, I am convinced that it will recover.
Waiting for Atis and Jassarte of the great vintage 2015, let’s enjoy the latest bottles of the excellent 2013 and the other historical vintages.
Michele Scienza
