Here's an iconic wine from the Veneto made from a blend of 68% Cabernet Sauvignon and 32% Merlot. The Maculan 2017 Fratta shows enormous intensity, muscle and brawn. The wine has absorbed every last drop of sunshine, heat and dry weather conditions that characterized the 2017 growing season, and it does so with elegance and poise. The wine is impeccably balanced with dark fruit and spice. It's the kind of big-boned red wine you'll want to pair with a hearty dish of barbecue or marinated beef. Some 7,000 bottles were made, and I tasted bottle number 589. The Fratta spirit is beautifully expressed in 2017.

The 2015 Fratta is a blend of equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from Northeast Italy, where hot summers cede to cool autumn days with steep diurnal shifts. This is a bold and very ripe red wine with robust, full-bodied appeal. The wine sits heavy on the palate thanks to its thick fiber and structure. It needs something hearty like grilled meat or roast lamb to move it along over the palate. The fruit sees a brief four or five days of so-called over-ripeness to achieve the density and thickness you get here. Like the other red wines from Maculan, the grapes are fermented in steel with punch-downs and seven days of skin contact. This wine then ages in new French barrique for one year. Some 10,000 bottles were made.

The Maculan 2012 Fratta represents a tremendous effort. This is a beautifully intense and profound expression of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot that is layered, rich and opulent. The wine offers enormous bounty in the form of blackberry preserves, baking spice, cured tobacco and soft cherry confit. It shows equally impressive results in the mouth with a high textural structure and long persistence that lasts many long minutes. It will be exciting to follow this wine's promising evolution over the next decade.

The 2011 Fratta boasts the bolder, more extracted and fleshier style that has made this IGT blend of 35% Merlot and 65% Cabernet Sauvignon an icon of Italian wine. Perhaps the complexity is not as articulate in the warmer 2011 vintage, but the intensity of fruit and the sheer pleasure factor remain absolutely impressive. It struck me that Fratta is a little outdated stylistically speaking in the current world of Italian wine that prizes streamlined elegance. But timeless classics do exist and Fratta is one of them.

Impossible not to love, the 2010 Fratta is Maculan’s groundbreaking blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Fratta proved the Veneto’s winemaking potential when it was first produced in 1977, birth year of Angela Maculan (a second daughter). The wine shows beautiful lines and sharp focus with drying mineral tones that frame dark fruit, dried cherry and exotic spice. It’s a bold and big wine, but there is no doubting the profound elegance of this signature expression. The excellent 2010 vintage has the prerequisites for long cellar aging. Drink 2015-2028. There are wine regions that make brands, and brands that make regions. Maculan (the brand) put Breganze (the region) on the world enological map. One of the most significant winemaking forces in the Veneto, Maculan eventually grew bigger than the territory that shaped it. At odds with the winemaking guidelines of the Breganze DOC, this historic estate decided to segment its production into two schools of wine: The lower-priced DOC products and the higher-priced IGT offerings. “This was an obligatory step,” says Maria Vittoria Maculan, one of Fausto’s daughters. The good news for consumers is that both are excellent despite the huge, surreal differences in price. I’m also told that Maculan will soon introduce two new wines made with the Recantina and the Marzemino grapes respectively. I look forward to tasting them very soon. Importer: Winebow, www.winebow.com