Ratings & Tasting Notes:

99 points — Jane Anson, February 2025
One of the few 2022 Tuscan wines where the benefit of a few years in bottle is clearly visible. Currently hovering on the edge of something delicious, vibrating over its tannic architecture, with campfire smoke, fennel, blackberry, liquorice and crushed peonies, and a bitter fennel and slate scrape. Dense, with a contrast of textures and flavours that only truly great wines achieve, and a reflection of skilful construction. Anson called it “a gorgeous wine, slowly stretching out in the palate.”

98 points — James Suckling, May 2025
A Mediterranean-style wine of stunning elegance on the nose, showing dried eucalyptus leaf, flowers, restrained brambleberry, black cherry, dried banana, milk chocolate, clove and graphite. Full-bodied with elegant tannins and a touch of dust, savoury and well packed, with integrated freshness and a ripe, fruity finish carrying a toasty aftertaste of blond tobacco. Try from 2026.

97 points — Wine Advocate, February 2025
The oak is crucial to this wine’s identity, drawn from a wide group of coopers with different toast levels and forests — Frescobaldi’s stated aim being not to make the wine of any single tonnellerie. Reveals dark fruit, blackberry, sweet spice and cinnamon. The 2022 will be remembered for its full-bodied appeal, concentrated fruit and generous oak, with Petit Verdot playing a larger role and lengthening the wine. Abundant fruit weight ceding to elegantly integrated tannins.

96 points — Decanter, July 2025
A hefty 10% Petit Verdot injects freshness and structure. Rich, deep and tightly coiled, with pretty red fruits and floral notes over dark, juicy berries. A dense style reflecting the vintage but aiming at harmony and poise, its woody frame and fine structural tannins countered by very good acidity and bright fruit, with breezy herbs lifting a long, fresh finish. Worth more time in bottle.

96 points — Jeb Dunnuck

96 points — Vinous
A terrific wine for the year. Dark red-toned fruit, mocha, new leather, liquorice and spice in a mid-weight, pliant Ornellaia that is alluring even in the early going. The elevated Petit Verdot comes through in the wine’s dark-leaning personality and in the quality of its tannins. Called a reminder of how important blending is in challenging years, and among the most successful wines of the vintage.

95 points — Wine Spectator

Cult Wines International Notes:

Ornellaia sits in the foothills near Bolgheri, a few kilometres from the Mediterranean, where sea breezes cool the vines in summer and the hills shelter them in winter. The soils are unusually varied, marine, alluvial and volcanic in origin. Fruit comes from many parcels, most planted in the 1980s, and around eighty separate wines are made before the final blend. Founded in 1981 by Lodovico Antinori, the estate has belonged to the Frescobaldi family since 2005. Since 2006 a contemporary artist has interpreted each vintage’s character for the Vendemmia d’Artista project, working from a single word chosen at the winery. For 2022, the seventeenth edition, that word was La Determinazione, determination, interpreted by Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou.

Lamberto Frescobaldi has said the name carries two meanings: the determination of the team, and that of the vines. 2022 tested both. A dry spring delayed budbreak, then some seventy-five days without rain brought serious water stress through flowering and veraison, cutting yields sharply. Summer storms arrived in time to restart ripening, and harvest came in among the earliest on record. The blend is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot and 10% each of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, the last unusually prominent and by several accounts the surprise of the year. Eighteen months in French oak. Expect blackberry, cassis, sweet spice, cinnamon, tobacco, graphite and eucalyptus over a powerful tannic frame. Best from 2026.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.

Condition:

Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.

Outstanding condition.