2020 Siepi

Full bottle 1,517 g. From three parcels of vines on this Castellina in Chianti estate that total 6 ha. After a warm summer with cool nights harvest started on 7 September with the Merlot and on 21 September with the Sangiovese, each of the varieties representing half of the blend. The clusters are hand-picked and gravity-fed into stainless-steel vats for fermentation, then the Merlot is transferred to French oak barrels and the Sangiovese to larger French oak casks, where they mature for 18 months. Before bottling, the final cuvée spends time in concrete vats. 29,000 bottles produced. See this Siepi vertical . Transparent crimson with a pale rim. Haunting, ripe aroma that's probably a Merlot effect but without too much sweetness. On the palate the tang and vibrancy of Sangiovese is evident. But those two elements already seem very nicely married with a light hint of tea. Long. Already a really very beautiful expression of the fruit of the Tuscan hills. Good balance between freshness and ripeness. (JR)

The 2020 Siepi is classy, elegant and super-polished. Inky blue fruit, lavender, new leather, cloves and mocha all meld together effortlessly. There is a sense of precision in the 2020 that is incredibly inviting. Even so, the 2020 is very young and not fully expressing its potential. This just needs time to emerge, but all the elements are there.

Equal parts Merlot and Sangiovese, the Mazzei 2020 Siepi is a terrific vintage in a long line of wines that I had the pleasure of tasting through last year in a complete retrospective. The first vintage produced was 1992. The soils in the Siepi vineyard are especially deep, and the site is surrounded by forests to keep it cool. These conditions give rise to abundant aromas of sweet black cherry, underbrush and blue wild flower. This is a medium to full-bodied Tuscan red that shows enormous elegance and depth.