Campo Al Mare Bolgheri Rosso 2020

The Folonari family has been in the region making wine since the late 1800s. For years, they stuck to indigenous varietals, but that changed in the 1990s when they became one of the very first in Bolgheri to purchase land specifically for the purpose of planting Bordeaux varietals. One of their pioneering innovations was identifying a very special terrain: a mixture of clay and sand was perfectly suited to Bordelaise varieties.

Their flagship bottling, Campo Al Mare Bolgheri, comes from this special plot and indeed produces beautiful, plump and fleshy Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. This wine does an incredible job of mirroring a Right Bank Bordeaux. But its proximity to the sea breezes from the Tyrrhenian give this a little something extra, a delicious mouthwatering salinity.

The hardest working Italian wine critic in the world, James Suckling was the first to get his hands on this new vintage. He tasted what I did last week – a silky, elegant Super Tuscan that he deemed worthy of a 94-point score. That’s probably pretty similar to what I’d give it – meaning at today’s price point it’s a sensational SuperTuscan value.