Tenuta Argentiera presents the first Ventaglio vintage, fruit of a unique plot, located in a prime position and at the peak of the winery’s production
Donoratico, May 2020 – Ventaglio is Tenuta Argentiera’s first single vineyard wine and it represents the best of the winery’s production in terms of location, pedoclimatic characteristics and grape quality. Produced only with truly exceptional vintages, in an extremely limited number of bottles, it is a wine strictly tied to the land and the people who make it. It is the epitome of the choices made in favour of quality by the property, represented by Stanislaus Turnauer, who has unsurprisingly chosen it as the symbol of the winery’s new deal, with the precise aim of coming up with a truly outstanding label that will capture the essence of the southern slope of Bolgheri in its most complex and characteristic form.
The winery’s vineyards, which cover up a total area of 80 hectares, grow within the Bolgheri DOCdenomination, in the municipality of Castagneto Carducci, with the exception of Ventaglio whose vineyards are located near the hills of Donoratico, at 120 metres above sea level. A hectare of land planted with Cabernet Franc embracing the entire hilltop and following its contours, taking on an iconic wheel-and-spoke pattern that has given the name of the wine: Ventaglio.
«From the top of the hill, this vineyard-chest, yields a wine with exceptional complexity and structure, balanced by an indisputable elegance, says Stanislaus Turnauer, at the helm of Argentiera since 2016. We wanted a wine that is an all-round “collective natural creation” in which all the nuances of the terroir find their proper, balanced expression.»
The “shape of the wine” is a direct result of the shape of the vineyard: the grapes are harvested while fully respecting the differences in aromatic development, ripeness and freshness. In the vineyard, treatments are minimised and all agricultural practices are oriented towards complete environmental sustainability and maintenance of the soil’s vitality.
Ventaglio 2015
Vinification
Made with 85% of Cabernet Franc and 15% of Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes, harvested by hand after a careful selection of bunches that best express the characteristics of this vineyard, have been transferred to small truncated cone-shaped French oak tanks.
Maceration has taken place with the alternation of daily pumping over and manual punching down of the cap for 25 days at a controlled temperature of 28 to 30°C. The wine is then poured into French and Austrian oak barriques and tonneaus, some of which are new, for a complete malolactic fermentation. The wine has then aged in oak barrels for 18 months, followed by a refinement period of 24 months in the bottle.
Harvest
Winter 2015 has not been excessively cold, with plenty of rainfall that has fallen only for a few days. A mild spring season came early, bringing temperatures within the seasonal average and weak, sporadic rainfall. Summer began on the same dry note, with particularly high average temperatures in June and July. Temperatures in August were in line with the average for the season, but abundant rainfall allowed the harvest to begin at the usual time of year. Cabernet Franc was harvested on September 18th, while Cabernet Sauvignon was collected on the 23rd.
A limited edition
We have decided to continue production of this unique wine exclusively with exceptional harvests, and for this reason the first vintage has been bottled in 250 1.5-litre magnums and 2,950 750-ml bottles. 500 of these bottles form a numbered limited edition, whose packaging has been made with the collaboration of decorators from Florence. Resembling a theatre curtain, Ventaglio is presented in a “metaphysical” box that combines a Baroque landscape painting with the innovative packaging that has made the vineyard famous.
