Lornano Supertuscan Commendator Enrico 2015

Eddie the Wine Guy and I exchange knowing glances around the tasting bench. We both have impeccable taste in wine. Far, far better than almost anyone else on the planet. And when we’re on the same page with something like this, you know that it’s a wine that’ll set the earth a-quakin’, the walls a-shakin’, the smokers a-vapin’ and the curtains a-drapin’. This is beyond Super Tuscan. This feels like Ultra Tuscan.

A wine of such immeasurable complexity, power and dynamism that we’ve heard whispered it’s going to star in a Marvel movie all of its own. A wine with such long-term potential that, rumour has it, cellars themselves give in to time before it does. 

Immediately cutting-edge, but imbued with the feel of timeless tradition, Commander Henry (as he’s known, somewhat underwhelmingly, in English) garnered an (oddly) perfect 99 points from Luca Maroni, Italy’s premier wine critic. Quite why Luca’s scale only goes up to 99 is a mystery. After reviewing this wine, he vanished. Some say he was driven mad upon tasting sheer perfection, his life’s work completed, and, having no further purpose, fled to the peak of Mt Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes, for no other plausible reason than his knowing that it is the furthest point on the surface of the earth from the core (due to the equatorial bulge). Others say that it was Luca, his mind and body melted by the incomprehensible majesty of this wine, that formed the oddly glistening stain which his unknowing nonna promptly wiped up with a spray of ‘Sgrassatore’ (Italy’s number one degreaser) and a swift dab of the dishcloth, never to be seen again. She wonders where he vanished to from time to time. 

She’s sure, though, that he’s still nearby somehow. Sometimes, in the quiet postprandial heat of the summer’s day, as she makes her ritual pre-nap espresso, she can hear his voice in amongst the burbling of the caffettiera. It whispers, “Commendatoreeeeeeee”.

I may not have spat at tasting.