Masseto is Italy’s most celebrated Merlot. Though these days it is run as an autonomous winery, it lies on the Ornellaia estate, near the village of Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast. While it was very much a project of Lodovico Antinori, the founder of Ornellaia, Masseto owes its genesis to the celebrated Russian-American winemaker Andre Tselistcheff, who was visiting Ornellaia in its early days. Tselistcheff pinpointed a site on an estate neighbouring Ornellaia, which he said would be ideal for Merlot. Local advice and tradition went against planting vines there, but Tselistcheff disagreed. The blue clay and gravel soils reminded him of Pomerol. Tselistcheff knew that the natural drainage, the exposition, the cooling sea air and the second helping of sunlight reflected from the Tyrrhenian Sea made this an ideal site. Antinori listened - he bought the site and planted Merlot. The layers of clay are rock hard there, and in some places the clay looks like solid boulders - ‘massi’ – which gave Antinori the name for his new project, Masseto.

Time proved Tselistcheff absolutely right about the quality of wine this site could make. In the early days, Masseto was labelled as a Vino da Tavola, later on it took on the IGT Toscana label – but either way, it fitted in instantly into the SuperTuscan milieu (and was priced as such). For a long time it was vinified in the Ornellaia cellars.

When financial troubles forced Antinori to sell Ornellaia to Robert Mondavi, Masseto moved with it. A few years later, Mondavi had troubles of its own, and the Frescobaldi family acquired full control of Ornellaia and Masseto in 2005. In 2017, Masseto finally acquired a state-of-the-art winery and cellar all its own. 2017 also saw the launch of a lauded second wine, Massetino. While Masseto is (most vintages) 100% Merlot, Massetino always incorporates an element of Cabernet Franc. (22/10/2025)