Castello dei Rampolla
d'Alceo
Toscana IGT
2016

The producer

The modern history of Castello dei Rampolla starts in 1965 with Alceo di Napoli who, inspired by the success of Sassicaia, decided to plant Cabernet Sauvignon in the family’s vineyards. Owned by the di Napoli family since the 16^th century, the estate dates back even longer than that. The first vintage launched in 1980, and Alceo at the time hired Giacomo Tachis (superstar winemaking consultant who also worked the early years at Sassicaia) to guide the family’s winemaking in the right direction. Current generation and owner, Luca di Napoli, converted the 30 hectares of vineyards to biodynamics in the mid 1990s.  These are Super Tuscans of great concentration and fragrance, and production is tiny, at around 8,000 to 25,000 bottles per year. We currently list the Sammarco and d’Alceo cuvees.

The wine

Vigna d’Alceo is a Super Tuscan blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, made by the higher elevation vineyards. Vinification takes place in concrete tanks for 3 months, and is then followed by 12-15 months ageing in tonneaux, and finally 12-15 months in bottle. A wine of rich and ripe red fruit with hints of floral, savoury and tobacco complexity, the body is full and generous with a firm structure. Annual production is around 6,000-12,000 bottles per year.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.