2010 Redigaffi 7

This is the year of many transformational changes at Tua Rita. The most important of which is the death of Tua Rita founder Virgilio Bisti (Rita Tua's husband and Stefano Frascolla's father-in-law). It is also the last year that Stefano Chioccioli worked as the consulting winemaker before Luca D'Attoma would return to the post he occupied previously. (As a side note, it is the first vintage I reviewed for Robert Parker Wine Advocate after joining the publication. From this point forward, I am rescoring wines against my own scores.) I remember falling in love with the 2010 Redigaffi when I first tasted it those many years ago. Today, I find an elegant wine that is a little closed on the nose. A hailstorm on August 17th broke up a classic growing season. This wine shows freshness and some herbal overtones, but it also feels slightly more evolved and tertiary.

I am struck by how light on its feet the 2010 Redigaffi is for such a big wine. Dark red cherries, tobacco, licorice, smoke and anise all flesh out as this layered wine opens up in the glass. Over time, the wine's intense salinity emerges, adding energy, drive and polish. Hints of dark cherry, plum and smoke reappear on the vibrant finish. Readers will find much to admire in the superb 2010. To be sure, the 2010 is less outwardly opulent than is often the case with Redigaffi, but there is no denying the wine's absolute beauty.

The 2010 Redigaffi is even more impressive with seamless integration of ripe fruit and oak spice that meet each other perfectly in the middle. It soars to new heights of elegance and power, imparting beautiful tones of black fruit, polished river stone, bacon fat and black pepper as it makes its steady ascent. The mouthfeel is fleshy and generous and there is plenty of backbone here to carry the wine forward throughout the years.