2022 Mazzei Castello di Fonterutoli 'Concerto' Toscana IGT

In 1981 the Mazzei family filled fifteen barriques with a Sangiovese and Cabernet blend and shut the cellar door. Eighteen months later they opened it.

The two grapes had come together so cleanly that Marchesa Carla Mazzei named the wine Concerto. It became one of the original Super Tuscans, one of the ten bottlings that built the category.

80% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. The Sangiovese is there to convey the place, because that is what the native grape does. The Cabernet bolsters it rather than taking it over.

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." The family quotes that line about itself. They have been carrying the torch at Fonterutoli since 1435, and Giovanni Mazzei is the twenty-fifth generation.

They were among the first to bottle Chianti Classico. The estate still works Tuscany, and more recently Maremma, Sicily and the Veneto.

Two vineyards make Concerto, and only two. Sangiovese off Scassi at 350 metres, from massal selections traced to a 1930s experimental block. Cabernet off Brotine at 340 metres, ringed by oak forest on calcareous rock.

The estate argues its Brotine Cabernet is not standard Cabernet at all. The site has given it a character of its own.

2022 was hot and dry in Tuscany, and on paper that reads like a problem year. It thickened the skins instead. The fruit came in healthy and the estate picked from 20 September.

Yields dropped. Without rain the clusters weighed less, and 38,000 bottles came out of it.

The two varieties ferment apart and age apart. Sangiovese in tonneaux, Cabernet in barriques, eighteen months each. They are blended late, then rest three months in concrete.

Forty-plus years on, the experiment still works. Open it with something braised and give it an hour.