“It was luck,” according to Axel Heinz, the winemaker at Ornellaia, that accounted for the extraordinarily rapid ascent of Ornellaia in the eyes of the world. “It was lucky that Mario Incisa della Rocchetta [owner of Sassicaia] planted Bordeaux varieties when [in the 1940s] and where he did [Bolgheri].

Remember, there were no consultants or elaborate soil testing back then to help determine what to plant and where to plant it.” But the story of Ornellaia’s success is far more than luck. There’s good ol’ fashioned sibling rivalry, a clear vision and extraordinary attention to detail.

In thirty years, a blink of an eye compared to the centuries wine has been made in Bordeaux or Burgundy, Ornellaia and Masseto, the estate’s single vineyard Merlot-based wine, have catapulted from obscurity to being tightly allocated and commanding triple digit prices around the world.

To be fair, there are cult California Cabernets that command the same price and have risen rapidly from similar obscurity, but those wines are produced in tiny quantities, sold primarily via mailing lists and sought after by American collectors, by and large.

By contrast, the Tenuta dell’Ornellaia’s annual production is comparable to that of the major Bordeaux estates with 140,000 bottles (12,000 12-bottle cases) of Ornellaia and 35,000 bottles (3,000 12-bottle cases) of Masseto. And there is clear global demand for Ornellaia and Masseto; only one-third of the production is sold in Italy.