Ratings & Tasting Notes:

95 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate

The 1995 Ornellaia is a legendary, blockbuster masterpiece that stands out as one of the finest wines ever made at this coastal estate. It boasts an opaque purple/black color, followed by a spectacular nose of cassis, toast, licorice, and violets. Massive and rich, yet wonderfully balanced and pure, it features “a gorgeous texture, highly extracted, rich, layers of fruit, and a finish that lasts for 45+ seconds.” This profound wine is an absolute tour de force. Robert Parker, December 1998

93 points Wine Spectator

Dark-colored, with beautiful, intense aromas of blackberries, mint, and currants. Full-bodied, with velvety, structural tannins and a long, long fruit-and-spice finish. This is an incredibly solid, classic Ornellaia built for a long life in the cellar, showing “gorgeous aromas of blackberries, mint and currants… full-bodied and velvety.” James Laube, January 1998

Cult Wines International Notes:

Tenuta dell’Ornellaia stands as an elite, globally revered titan of the Bolgheri estate landscape, originally founded in 1981 by Marchese Lodovico Antinori on Tuscany’s sun-drenched Mediterranean coast. Celebrated for bringing an opulent, cinematic New World flare to traditional Bordeaux varieties, the estate helped define the modern “Super Tuscan” movement, cementing Bolgheri as one of the world’s premier terroirs for elite Cabernet and Merlot. The estate’s eponymous flagship cuvée, Ornellaia, is a masterful expression of maritime-influenced viticulture. The 1995 release showcases a sensational, highly classic Super Tuscan composition, precisely weaving 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, and 6% Cabernet Franc sourced entirely from the estate’s complex, alluvial, and marine-fossil soils.

The 1995 growing season across the Tuscan coast is universally celebrated as a historic, benchmark vintage, yielding fruit of extraordinary concentration and pristine structural symmetry. Following a cool, rain-soaked spring that delayed budbreak and flowering, the weather completely corrected itself with an intensely hot, golden summer. A perfectly temperate September followed, allowing for a slow, flawless phenolic maturation across all blocks. The manual harvest was executed with fanatical precision from September 11th through October 11th, yielding small, thick-skinned berries with immense structural focus. The grapes underwent an extended 25-to-30-day maceration before being transferred into French oak barriques (40% new) for 15 months of maturation, followed by bottling completely unfined and unfiltered.

At over three decades of age, the 1995 Ornellaia has transitioned beautifully into a highly sophisticated, fully mature library masterpiece. The youthful, jammy primary fruit has elegantly evolved to reveal complex, tertiary layers of saddle leather, dark cassis compote, cigar box, espresso bean, and dried sage. Supported by fully integrated, satin-like tannins and a clean, food-friendly spine of maritime acidity, this magnificent vintage offers a highly rewarding, luxurious tasting experience for serious collectors of aged Italian royalty.