As anyone who has enjoyed a bottle of the mythical Sassicaia will tell you, Tuscany can do Cabernet Sauvignon as well as anyone. The variety isn’t some recent “import” to the region, either—it’s always been a part of the blend used in the wines of Carmignano, one of the most historic wine appellations in Italy. For most of the “super-Tuscan” Cabernets of yore (like Sassicaia), Bordeaux was very much the model. But in both his packaging and the style of the wine inside the bottle, Montesecondo’s Silvio Messana blazes his own trail. His “Il Rospo'' puts an emphatic Tuscan twist on the Cabernet grape, and perhaps his packaging it in a Burgundy bottle is his way of saying, “this one is different.”

The vineyard source for “Il Rospo'' is only about 20 kilometers from the one that supplies Antinori’s “Solaia,” right in the heart of Chianti Classico. Take the structure and savor of a traditionally styled Chianti Classico, apply it to the more generously fruited, darker-toned Cabernet Sauvignon, and you’ve summed up today’s 2018 pretty well. It comes from organically farmed old vines in the hamlet of San Casciano Val di Pesa, and rather than go for full-throttle fruit saturation and lavish oak, Messana takes what his terroir gives him: a mineral, fragrant, cool-climate expression of the grape that shares structural similarities with is Chiantigiano cousins. This wine has always reminded me of another Chianti-grown Cabernet—Castello dei Rampolla’s legendary “Sammarco”—because of that trueness to its place of origin. It’s not trying to be Bordeaux, and it doesn’t need to: It’s perfectly comfortable in its Tuscan skin. Get this in your glass soon, because it really is a game-changer!

If there are similarities to Bordeaux in this 2018, it would be to lower-alcohol, more earth-driven Bordeaux wines of a generation ago. The precision focus, and the way the wine needs time to unwind (we recommend an hour-long decant before serving), speaks to a more “classic” era, which is something we’ve come to expect from Silvio Messana. He is fiercely committed to organic and biodynamic principles in his vineyards and is an avowed anti-interventionist in the cellar. He spent time working in the wine business in New York before returning to Chianti Classico in the 1990s, taking over a property first purchased by his father in 1963. Located in the hamlet of Cerbaia, just outside San Casciano Val di Pesa in the northwestern-most corner of the Chianti Classico DOCG, the Montesecondo “home” vineyard is now augmented by a six-hectare vineyard in a tiny village called Vignano, about 18 kilometers away. 

Silvio’s parents had planted Sangiovese, Colorino, and Canaiolo, along with Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, and had sold the farm’s grapes to the local cooperative; it wasn’t until 2000 that Silvio bottled his first ‘estate’ wine from the family’s fruit, and not long after that, he began the conversion to organic farming; by 2005 he had stopped selling fruit to others and begun to establish Montesecondo as a source of classically styled wines of exceptional energy and purity. His are some of the most perfumed, high-toned Sangiovese wines around (some of which are labeled as Chianti Classico, others as Toscana IGT Sangiovese), and “Il Rospo,” which hails from the clay and marl soils of the original family vineyard in San Casciano, is a perfumed, high-toned take on Cabernet Sauvignon—not a shrinking violet, by any means, but not a heavily extracted fruit bomb, either.

Crafted from Cabernet Sauvignon blended with a small percentage of the Petit Verdot with which it is co-planted, “Il Rospo” is fermented and aged in concrete tanks, with no sulfur added during fermentation and only the tracest amount used at bottling. In the glass, it’s a deep ruby with garnet highlights at the rim, with an inviting nose of ripe black cherry, black and red currant, cassis, gingerbread, licorice, damp violets, pencil shavings, and a note of damp, smoky underbrush that hints at Sangiovese from Montalcino. There are many Brunellos (including many that cost twice and three-times this wine) that wish they had this wine’s mix of bright, deep fruit and mineral savor; not only is the oak influence not missed, but the wine also displays great power and grip with very moderate alcohol. It’s really a phenomenal wine, and one that’s poised to improve over time: If you’re enjoying a bottle now, decant it a good hour before serving it in copious red wine stems—I’m not going to choose Bordeaux or Burgundy, it could go either way—at 60-65 degrees. Re-visit it periodically over the next 5-10 years, as I expect it to mellow and deepen into one of the more elegant and aromatically persistent Cabernets in your cellar. All this, meanwhile, for just $40—not bad at all, and pitch-perfect with a Tuscan-style ragù over fresh pasta. Like I said, it’s a game-changer. Enjoy!