The New Tuscan Counterculture

Rolling Stone was put up for sale by founder Jann Wenner in 2017, almost 50 years to the day since its first issue was produced by Jann and music critic Ralph J. Gleason out of a loft in San Francisco with a loan of US$7,500.

When I read of the sale, I started looking up early copies online, finding a PDF of the first ever issue from November 1967. It looked more like a newspaper than a magazine, with an arresting front page image of John Lennon posing in a World War II service uniform for Richard Lester’s film How I Won the War, clearly setting out its stall as part of the 1960s cultural revolution.

For wine lovers, that decade’s revolution became so heady that it escaped all the way from California to the quiet slopes of Chianti Classico, and to the most unlikely of counter culture heros – Italian nobleman Marchese Mario Incisa della Rochetta. His Bordeaux-inspired Cabernet Sauvignon-led Sassicaia made its official launch out of French oak barrels in 1968, bottled as a table wine because it fell outside of the traditional rules. In doing so, it reset the conversation about Italian wines, establishing a small band of rebel winemakers working outside the prevailing traditions, breaking the rules and setting the world of wine alight.

You don’t need me to list the many brilliant wines inspired by Incisa della Rochetta’s leap in the dark, but the Rolling Stone sale seemed to rather neatly bookend the era, and usher in a question that has been increasingly loud in recent years – namely whether we have reached Peak Super Tuscan, and whether today’s true counter culture wines in Italy are those that use tradition rather than innovation?

Staying current
Someone who should understand the issue more than most is Dr Paolo Panerai, owner of Rocca di Frassinello in Maremma and Castellare di Castellina in Chianti Classico. A journalist since 1970, he studied law and agricultural sciences, became editor of Panorama, Il Mondo and Capital magazines, and today owns Class Editori Spa; a financial publishing house that he founded in 1986 comprising an array of newspapers, magazines, press agencies, tv and radio (he’s known, unsurprisingly, as the Bloomberg of Italy).

One of the problems for Rolling Stone, according to the New York Times’ reading of the sale, is that it didn’t evolve alongside the changing world of publishing. It noted the impact not only of a number of law suits that damaged its brand way beyond the financial cost, but also the slow burn of a changing media landscape and publisher Jan Wenner’s general skepticism of the internet and the need for brand extension.

Panerai is a particularly interesting figure to look at in terms of the similarly evolving wine landscape, as he is owner of two extremely different expressions of the Super Tuscan.

For a long time, Panerai’s most high profile Super Tuscan came from the hugely impressive estate Rocca di Frassinello – located between Bolgheri and Scansano and originally a joint venture with Domaines Baron de Rothschild Lafite although the partnership is no longer in place (the Lafite barrels still make their way here after first use in Pauillac). Frassinello has a winery built by Renzo Piano, architect of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and The Shard in London, and is the site of Toscana IGT Baffonero, a 100% Merlot aged in 100% new oak launched in 2007 as an express competitor to Masseto, Messorio, and Redigaffi.

In contrast, Panerai’s original venture in Tuscan wine – ironically enough dating back to 1968, the same year as Sassicaia – came with the purchase of five farms in Chianti Classico that he put together to form the property Castellare di Castellina. It is this one which seems to have the rumble of zeitgeist around it now.

Winemaker Alessandro Cellai oversees both, but the atmospheres couldn’t be more different. At Castellare, tradition is key, farming is organic (if uncertified) and Vino Santo is made by the traditional method of hanging the Malvasia and Trebbiano grapes to dry out slowly over the winter months. The main red wine is bottled as a Toscana IGT, so within the Super Tuscan umbrella, but this time a blend only of indigenous grape varieties – the Sangioveto clone of Sangiovese and Malvasia Nera, a grape that used to be extremely popular in Chianti but fell from grace due to its sensitivity to humidity and rot.

‘When it works, Malvasia Nerais the perfect partner to Sangiovese’, Cellai, who trained under Giacomo Tachis, explained over a tasting. ‘It adds roundness and sweetness, rather than aromatics, and the tannins are like velvet. We think of it as the Italian Merlot’.

This wine, I Sodi di San Niccolo (referring to the soils where it is grown and the San Niccolo church that is located on the estate), was created in 1977 and was also first bottled as a Vino da Tavola, or table wine. It follows the same story as all these early Super Tuscans – the local rules stated that Chianti Classico had to be made with 10% of white grapes, which Panerai chose not to do, and so the only option was to label outside of the official system. They grow Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon at Castellare, but they are bottled separately and have never been part of the flagship wine.

‘We wanted to prove that Super Tuscans could be made entirely with native Tuscan grapes,’ said Panerai. ‘We bottled as a Toscana IGT from 1995 once the category was approved, but when the rules changed again and we had the option to make it a DOCG Chianti Classico, we decided to keep it as an IGT. It’s a wine that has always lived outside the appellation, and we liked the thought of a Super Tuscan that was born from only the local grapes’.

This philosophy is now gathering speed, even if it took a while. The iconic Pergole Torte and Isole e Olena’s Cepparello were both 100% Sangiovese from the beginning. Another one of the originals, Vigorello, blends Cabernet, Petit Verdot and Merlot with Pugnitello, an ancient local variety that is now regaining ground, while Capannelle Solare is a blend of Sangiovese and Malvasia Nera. Even Carlo Ferrini, the renowned consultant to the Super Tuscans who became known in the 1990s as Mr Merlot, makes his own wine Giodo Toscana Rosso IGT entirely from Sangiovese. Over in Bolgheri, a growing band of young producers, from Michele Satta, to Fabio Motta and Grattamacco are making names for themselves by championing Sangiovese. Others take their cue from Tignanello, where Sangiovese is around 80% alongside Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, so still with a nod to Bordeaux, but firmly dominated by the local grape.

In many ways, Super Tuscans have never been stronger. They dominate trade in Italian wines on Liv-ex (8.9% in 2024 compared to 0.9% in 2010 and 6% in 2019), dominated by Sassicaia – not strictly a Super Tuscan as from outside the Chianti Classico geographic region, although this distinction is now widely ignored – followed by Tignanello, Ornellaia and Masseto. But the meaning of the term is evolving fast.

Superstar Italians in heavy bottles with lashings of oak enrobing Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon can feel like yesterday’s news, particularly as questions about the suitability of Merlot in the increasingly regular drought summers are become uncomfortably loud. And with prestigious new categories for premium wines such as Chianti Classico Gran Selezione, it’s worth asking whether the entire movement, like the garagiste movement in St Emilion before it, has outgrown itself? Is there any longer a reason for counter-culture winemakers to bottle their traditional varieties under the IGT system?

The 16 founding members of the ‘historical’ Super Tuscan wine committee, launched in 2021 with Paolo Panerai as president, would suggest yes. The true revolutionaries today, they would say, are the ones looking at climate change, responsible farming, indigenous grape varieties, minimal additives and other techniques to maximize terroir – and the winemakers who were prepared to push the boundaries back at the launch of the Super Tuscan movement believe they are still best placed to lead the way.

‘The crisis of Chianti Classico in the 1970s and 1980s came about because of large scale plantings of the wrong clones of Sangiovese, that were planted for quantity over quality,’ says Cellai. ‘The answer the winemakers found was to plant Cabernet and Merlot, which provided a solution but also modified the character of the wine. I love seeing how the iconic international grapes thrive in our climate, but today there are clones that capture the innate beauty of Sangiovese without having to compromise. At the same time, many of our local forgotten varieties resist drought and heat without sacrificing flavour, and offer welcome acidity. Surely there is room for Super Tuscans that capture the possibility of all this?’

On Tuscany: From Brunello to Bolgheri, Wine Tales From the Heart of Italy
Academie du Vin is offering a 15% discount on all pre-orders of the book, please use the code TUSCANY15 on their website.

This article was first written by Jane Anson for Decanter magazine in 2017, and fully updated in 2024 for the On Tuscany book.