Wine -- an historic Super Tuscan

[Mike Buckley]

It's not enough that the Antinori family has been making wine in Tuscany through 26 generations since 1385. The current patriarch, Piero Antinori, is also one of the founders of Super Tuscan wine. Indeed, many people attribute the success of Super Tuscans to him so much that you would think he was the sole founder. This particular label is one of Antinori's first Super Tuscans and is widely considered to be consistently one of the best from the region.

There is no official meaning of Super Tuscan. The style came to be in the 1970s primarily because many Chianti winemakers were making inferior wine and because regulations restricted the innovative and better winemakers from using grapes and methods they thought would help bring back the former highly regarded reputation of Chianti. So, rather than label their wine as Chianti, they rebelled and began using grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah not allowed in Chianti. They also stopped using white wine grapes that were required in Chianti. Chianti was losing market share to the Super Tuscans, so the regulators relented by changing regulations in 1995, allowing for the first time for Chianti to be made entirely of Sangiovese. But it was too late; Super Tuscan winemakers were making wine in every price range including the very high-priced (very profitable) wine that wine drinkers were happy to buy, so the name and style stuck.

My big objection to Chianti is that very often the consumer doesn't know from examining the label how much Sangiovese is in the wine and, if there are other grape species, doesn't know which species; that knowledge too often comes only from looking up the information on the Internet. Ironically, that's also true of this Super Tuscan.

This wine is made of 80% Sangiovese, 5% Cabernet Franc and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon. It's expensive, which explains why I had never purchased it, but I couldn't resist when an unusual 20% discount became available. I'll hold it perhaps for years for a special occasion.


Setup
An LED flashlight at the bottom of the bottle lights mostly the top of the label. (I wanted the name of the wine to be most prominent.) A white reflector handheld above the label brightens the bottom of it. (I wanted the Antinori name to be second most prominent to the extent that the lighting would make that happen.) The reflector also adds a very slight reflection to the bottom of the bottle. The overall composition that fills the frame with the label makes it possible to easily notice the texture in the paper and to display the details of the long paragraph written in Italian, which is unusual for the American market.

[Digital]

Mike, I like the way you set up this photograph. Very creative.


Bruce

[Shadowman]

Nicely framed.

[Kaye Leggett]

A lovely addition to both your cellar and image portfolio.

Maybe a cellar photo shot one day ?

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you, everyone!

Maybe a cellar photo shot one day ?

I don't have a walk-in cellar but I am replacing an old, dying refrigerator in a storage room with a cellar that holds 75 bottles tomorrow. I may eventually make a photo of it.

[Donald]

A stylish image. High quality photography.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image Mike May I ask what that green thing near to the bottom right corner is? A reflection ?

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you to Donald and Binnur!

May I ask what that green thing near to the bottom right corner is? A reflection ?

Sure, go ahead and ask!

Seriously, that's the reflection mentioned in my setup that is created by the white reflector. I hadn't noticed the green cast until you mentioned it. That was introduced by an improper mask in my post-processing and is now fixed in my original file. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!