In the occasion of Vinitaly 2026, on Monday, April 13 at 11:30 AM at Wine2Digital, Palaexpo, Entrance A2 (Level +1), the Historical Super Tuscans Committee will host a tasting dedicated to the 2021 vintage of wines that symbolize one of the most important revolutions in the history of Italian wine.

The protagonists will be the producers who, starting from the late 1960s until the introduction of the IGT denomination, chose to step outside the regulations of the then-existing appellation system, which did not allow them to fully express the qualitative potential of their terroir. Instead, they adopted the classifi cation Vino da Tavola, the lowest level in the Italian wine quality pyramid, even for wines made from grapes grown in Chianti Classico DOC vineyards.

The term Super Tuscan was first coined by Master of Wine Nicolas Belfrage in an article published in Decanter, a defi nition that would go on to become part of the global wine lexicon. These wines played a key role in elevating Tuscany to the highest levels of international acclaim, winning over critics and consumers in major markets worldwide, from the United Kingdom to the United States, from France to Asia and Oceania.

To preserve and celebrate this extraordinary winemaking phenomenon, sixteen producers, key fi gures of this pioneering era, founded the Historical Super Tuscans Committee, positioning themselves as interpreters of the Tuscan wine renaissance. These are estates located in the Chianti Classico area that launched a “super wine” prior to 1994, taking the bold step of classifying it as Vino da Tavola.

This path was inspired by the Committee’s honorary founder, Marchese Piero Antinori, who, together with winemaker Giacomo Tachis, developed the pioneering vision of Enzo Morganti, the fi rst to classify Vigorello (San Felice) as Vino da Tavola, at a time when Chianti Classico DOC regulations still required the use of white grapes.

The tasting of the 2021 vintage will be led by Michelle Cherutti-Kowal MW, who last year conducted the tasting of the 2015 vintage, offering a critical interpretation of one of the most celebrated harvests of recent years. Drawing on her sensory memory and analytical depth, the Master of Wine will present a comparative reading of the two vintages.

As Cherutti-Kowal herself states: “The tasting thus becomes a dialogue between vintages: 2021 in the glass and 2015 in memory.” As in previous tastings organized by the Committee, a fi nal overall rating will be announced at the end of the session, calculated as the average of the sixteen wines presented, rather than individual scores. This is a deliberately symbolic choice: not a competition between labels, but a celebration of a collective phenomenon that transformed the history of Italian wine.

The Chairman of the HST Committee Paolo Panerai

Download here the wines: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RGaOIhJvNE9xyjtavISRyggMpRWCFv0L/view?usp=sharing

Photo Credit Historical Super Tuscans Committee