My guide and I came on that hidden road
to make our way back into the bright world;
and with no care for any rest, we climbed—
he first, I following—until I saw,
through a round opening, some of those things
of beauty Heaven bears. It was from there
that we emerged, to see—once more—the stars.
DANTE ALIGHIERI, INFERNO (TRANSLATION BY ALLEN MANDELBAUM)
In his epic poem The Divine Comedy, Dante journeys from the depths of inferno (hell) to the heights of purgatorio (purgatory) and beyond. His poetic and figurative guide through most of these realms is the Roman poet (and his literary hero) Virgil. Dante, writing in his native Tuscan of the early fourteenth century, describes his guide (duca) as both knowing (savio) and truthful (verace).1 In our epic search for the true Chianti, we too were in need of a knowing and truthful guide. We found one in the towering figure of Giovanni Brachetti Montorselli. Nanni, as he is known throughout Chianti, worked for the Chianti Classico consortium for almost forty years. In the 1970s he was its chief inspector in the field. He witnessed the transformation of Chianti’s traditional fattorie into modern wine estates. He navigated Chianti’s curved and banked strade campestri (rural roads), both paved and unpaved. He survived countless battles in the Guerra del Chianti, the conflict between Chianti Classico and External Chianti that raged for most of the twentieth century. And he lived to see this War of Chianti formally end in a truce in 2005, with External Chianti securing the exclusive use of the historic name Chianti for both its peripheral territory and the wines of its seven subzones—an outcome Montorselli describes as assurdo (absurd)!
Montorselli is Florentine to his six-foot-six-inch core. He was baptized in the baptistery named for San Giovanni (Florence’s patron saint) directly in front of Florence’s Duomo, Santa Maria del Fiore. He proclaims that he was born with “Firenze negli occhi” (Florence in his eyes), though it was in the city of Siena (Florence’s ancient rival) that his most famous ancestor, the painter Dionisio Montorselli, distinguished the family name, beginning in the late seventeenth century. The Montorselli family is legendary in Siena for its physical stature. For centuries, a Sienese, when catching sight of an extremely tall man, was likely to exclaim, “Look, a Montorselli!”
On a crisp and clear Saturday morning in late October 2014, Montorselli (seventy-eight years young) arrived at our agriturismo in his navy Mercedes sedan. He had offered to show us his Chianti—the vero (true) Chianti. In his role as an inspector for the consortium, he had regularly visited almost all of the estates throughout the zone. Giovanna Morganti had told us on an earlier trip to her wine estate, Le Boncie, that she remembered Montorselli coming regularly in the 1970s to San Felice (where her father, Enzo Morganti, had been the director) to offer technical support. Montorselli greeted us, declaring in his baritone Tuscan, “Today we will see Chianti, la terra [the land] where Chianti Classico is made!” We knew we were in the right hands. After we loaded our day gear into his trunk, we all marveled at the clear view of the medieval towers of San Gimignano to the west. We were at the western edge of Chianti, to the northeast of Poggibonsi (midway between Florence and Siena). Montorselli explained how Val d’Elsa (the Elsa River Valley) borders Chianti to the west, while Valdarno (the Arno River Valley) borders it to the east. Poggibonsi, though just outside the Chianti Classico zone, has played a pivotal role in its history. The town was a flash point for the battles between Florence and Siena for control of Chianti, and in 1203 it was the imperial delegate of Poggibonsi who, in an arbitral decision, officially awarded control of Chianti to Florence. However, in the oft-recounted legend of the gallo nero, the Florentines won Chianti because they arranged for their black rooster (by either starving or almost drowning it) to crow hours before daybreak, giving their horseman a running start in the race against Siena’s. The point where the two horsemen crossed south of the town of Castellina is still called Croce Fiorentina (Florentine cross).
As we left our farmhouse and traveled north to Barberino Val d’Elsa, we passed the Castello di Monsanto and Isole e Olena wine estates. Approaching the small fortified village (borgo fortificato) of San Donato in Poggio, we glimpsed the crenellated stone bell tower of the parish church. The top of the tower was built with cut blocks of the tan local sandstone called pietra forte (strong rock) and the bottom third with the white local limestone called alberese. In stark contrast with the cathedrals of Florence and Siena, the Romanesque churches of Chianti are devoid of any external ornamentation. Montorselli explained how the case coloniche and everyday household and agricultural objects were similarly elemental in nature in Chianti. He declared that it was the “essentialness” (essenzialità) of things that was always valued there. “Come pane senza sale” (like bread without salt), he added.
As we traveled farther north in the direction of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, we saw Jeeps and SUVs sporadically parked by the side of the wooded road. Montorselli informed us that late October is prime hunting season for pheasant and wild boar (cinghiale) and that the camouflaged hunters whom we glimpsed returning to their trucks empty handed had been stalking their prey since daybreak. When the sound of gunshot occasionally rang out, black-and-white magpies darted from the woods. As we drove on, we asked about the small roadside crosses (croci via) and tabernacles with a statue of the Madonna (Madonnine) that we glimpsed at some intersections. Montorselli informed us that these sacred markers were created for the faithful who made pilgrimages to Rome beginning in the Middle Ages. After we passed the town of Sambuca Val di Pesa, we approached the medieval abbey Badia a Passignano. Graced with crenellated walls and towers and enveloped by a thicket of giant cypresses, the abbey looks more like a castle than a monastery. Montorselli explained that the Antinori estate had purchased the surrounding vineyards and leased its wine cellar from the frati (brothers) of the Vallombrosan Order. We then drove along the Antinori vineyards that produce the estate’s Tignanello wine. There was not a vineyard, village, church, hilltop, roadway, or rivulet that Montorselli could not name. We saw sheep and goats grazing in a nearby field, and Montorselli mentioned the name of the Sardinian shepherd who tends these flocks for his fellow Sardinians who have been producing the local pecorino and caprino cheeses since the 1960s.
As we turned south to head to Panzano on Strada Provinciale (SP) 118, we passed a sign for the wine estate Castello di Gabbiano and a smaller sign with an icon for a church. Sant’Angelo a Vico l’Abate is down a strada sterrata (unpaved road) past Gabbiano Castle. In 1319 its parishioners commissioned for their single-nave church the first dated painting attributed to the Sienese artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti. This image of the Madonna and child is now on display in the Museo di Arte Sacra in nearby San Casciano. Seated on an inlaid wooden throne, the corporeal and plain Madonna cradles her animated infant son, clasping her hands tenderly around him. As she stares directly ahead, the curly blond child’s gaze is fixed on his stoic, protective mother. Having wriggled his left foot out from under the blanket that his mother has loosely wrapped around him, the baby stretches his toes directly toward the viewer. The painting’s depiction of a three-dimensional space and the spontaneity of the mother and child’s interaction show Lorenzetti’s early embrace of perspective and naturalistic detail. At the very time when the wealthy families and trade guilds of Florence were fiercely competing to commission artworks by the Florentine masters who ultimately defined the proto-Renaissance, such as Giotto, the humble parishioners of Sant’Angelo a Vico l’Abate commissioned a work by a Sienese artist who was quietly beginning to transform the art of painting in their own hills of Chianti.2 For Montorselli, this work in all its simplicity and immediacy was created from and for “a real context.”
Back on the road south to Panzano, he told us that valleys and rivers have always defined Chianti. He pointed to Val di Pesa (the Pesa River Valley) on our right and Val di Greve (the Greve River Valley) on our left. Both of their rivers run north and flow into the Arno west of Florence. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as many as forty grain mills (mulino) and olive mills (frantoio) dotted the Pesa River. The Greve River has its source south of the storied wine town of Lamole, high in the steep hills that form the western buttress of the Chianti Mountains, the natural boundary between Chianti and Valdarno. Montorselli explained that Chianti’s rivers are seasonal, flowing after the winter rainfalls and drying to a trickle by the summer months. After passing the village of Panzano we turned on to Via Chiantigiana, Strada Regionale (SR) 222, the principal road that runs from Florence to Siena through Chianti. This part, also known as Nuova Chiantigiana, was paved for the first time only in the 1980s.
Driving around Panzano’s sun-filled amphitheater of vineyards, known as la conca d’oro (the golden shell), was like leaf peeping in New England. The vine leaves were aglow, in shades of gold and vermilion. While we were taking in the view, Montorselli explained that Panzano’s union of winegrowers has created the first biodistretto (organic district) in Europe. It was clear that this golden beauty is more than skin deep! Passing the parish church of San Leolino, we learned that Tenuta degli Dei, the nearby wine estate owned by the Italian fashion designer Roberto Cavalli and his son Tommaso, now rents its historic wine cellar.
Our journey then took us farther south on Via Chiantigiana, in the direction of Castellina. Winding along the twists and turns of the road’s curves and cutting their apexes, our car was flanked by the pelotons of cyclists who take to these country roads on weekends. Unfazed, our veteran captain recounted how the original Chianti wars were the pitched battles between Florence and Siena for control over this countryside that separated the two growing and powerful city-states. As if on cue, we then spied the lone tower of Grignano Castle, perched on a hilltop and guarding this stretch of the Chiantigiana. Montorselli announced that Michelangelo Buonarroti had purchased this castle-turned-villa-cum-farmhouse in the mid-sixteenth century and that Galileo Galilei had been the owner of a nearby farmhouse called Grignanello (some neighborhood!). Stopping just north of the town of Castellina we went to see the source of the Arbia River, which flows south through Chianti before merging with the Ombrone River south of Siena. Quoting Dante, Montorselli declared that it was the Sienese “che fece l’Arbia colorata in rosso” (who stained the waters of the Arbia red)3 when they vanquished the Florentine forces at the Battle of Montaperti on September 4, 1260. From this vantage point we had a clear view of Castellina, whose massive curved northern wall still embraces it. In the early 1400s, the governing council of the Florentine Republic ordered the architect of the Duomo’s cupola, Filippo Brunelleschi, to go to Castellina to assess how best to fortify its walls, which completely encircled the town then.4 As further proof of Castellina’s importance to the defense of Chianti, Florence commanded the Duomo’s masons to build these fortifications before completing the Duomo’s new workshop.5
Without stopping to examine Castellina’s extant northern wall close up, we turned eastward on SR429 to head to Radda—the township that was the administrative center of the Lega del Chianti until the late eighteenth century. Like Castellina, it is a fortified town with a monumental wall that was built to protect it from the invading forces of Siena and its German, Aragonese, and other allies. Unlike Castellina, Radda is still encircled by walls. Nearby, in a high valley to the northwest of Radda, is a church named Santa Maria Novella in Chianti, whose resident monks are believed to have been the first to cultivate Vitis vinifera in Chianti, beginning in the eleventh century. The word novella derives from the medieval Latin term ager novellus (new field) and signifies a newly cultivated piece of land.6 After driving through the center of Radda and passing its Renaissance-style Palazzo del Podestà, we turned left and headed north on SP72, passing signs for the Vignavecchia, Montevertine, Volpaia, Caparsa, Poggerino, and Albola wine estates on our way to the Chianti Mountains.
Montorselli recounted that the past summer had been unusually rainy right up until mid-September, a few weeks before the grape harvest. Earlier in the week we had met Johannes (Giovanni) Davaz of the Poggio al Sole estate in Tavarnelle near Badia a Passignano. He described 2014 as the “anno di miracolo” (year of the miracle). After the rains stopped, the Sangiovese, Canaiolo Nero, Colorino, and other red varieties had three full weeks of sunshine to ripen, with warm days and cool nights. The vineyards were now radiant with the colors of the stagione ottobrata (October season)—yellow, red, and russet bordered by the silvery sage green of the olive trees and the dark green of the cypress trees. As we drove higher into the Chianti Mountains, we left the manicured vines, villas, and villages behind. Montorselli reminded us that Chianti has approximately fifty thousand hectares (123,553 acres, or 193 square miles) of forest, seven times the amount of land planted to vineyards. As we approached Monte San Michele, the highest point in this chain at 892 meters (2,927 feet), he declared, “The air here is clear and clean.” The curved road is hugged on both sides by small-scale oak (quercia) trees, entwined by delicate-leafed green ivy and dotted with whitish lichen. A thick carpet of ferns and purple cyclamens covered the forest floor. There are also holly oak (leccio), juniper (ginepro), and chestnut (castagno) trees at this altitude. Chianti’s woodlands have a primeval aura with their web of ivy and veil of lichen. The leaves of the trees had turned golden and chestnut brown. Montorselli explained that most of the trees are diminutive because the soil in Chianti is sassoso (stony) and povero (poor), and that when the leaves fall off the deciduous trees in November the panorama from the valleys below is grigio (gray) except for the evergreen of the pine trees, which were planted less than a century ago. The winter landscape in Chianti was not always devoid of color, though. Before the exodus of the peasant farmers from the countryside in the 1950s and 1960s, their case coloniche were façaded not with the “traditional” stone of Chianti’s country homes today but rather, as Montorselli described, with plaster in colori tenui (pastel colors)—giallo chiaro (straw yellow), celeste (sky blue), and verdolino (pale green).
At certain intersections along our journey, our tireless navigator would slow the car and, quietly speaking to himself (in classic Florentine), weigh his options like a chess master considering his next move on the game board. One time he decided to head farther north, briefly passing through Valdarno on the way to the town of San Polo in Chianti in the northeast corner of the Gallo Nero zone. On this stretch of unpaved road, clouds of whitish dust billowed around his sedan as we sped northward. Montorselli remarked that people today bypass these unpaved roads to avoid getting their cars dirty—“una mentalità strana!” (a strange way of thinking), he declared. He decided to show us San Polo because it is known for growing the flower that is believed to be the true symbol of Florence: the iris (giaggiolo), not the lily. While the city’s original flag pictured a white flower on a red background, after the Ghibelline political faction took control following the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, the colors were reversed, with a red flower sitting on a white background. There is no red giaggiolo, though, found in nature. San Polo sponsors an annual competition to reward any grower who succeeds in producing a red iris worthy of Florence’s flag. Its growers sell their dried irises to the perfumers in Grasse, France. San Polo is also celebrated for growing Tuscany’s prized spice, saffron (zafferano).
After San Polo we continued northwest on SP56 and curled around the northern edge of the zone to reenter Chianti. Montorselli recalled how in the 1990s he and his colleagues at the Chianti Classico consortium had arranged for signs to be posted at the entry and exit points of the historic zone of the Gallo Nero. On entering the appellation, a driver would see a grand gate with doors swung wide open and the message “Benvenuto, stai entrando nel regno di Chianti Classico” (Welcome, you are entering the kingdom of Chianti Classico). On leaving the zone, drivers would be greeted with an image of these same gates closed and a notice that they were departing this storied kingdom. This was a provocation to the merchants in External Chianti. In the end, the Chianti Classico consortium ordered Montorselli to take down the signs. Apparently, they made the point too clearly!
We continued on Via Chiantigiana heading south. When we reached the crest of a hill, Montorselli pointed out the window to show us how the topography at that location changes, from the lower, clayey hills behind us to the steeper, stonier, and forested landscape of Val di Greve, which lay before us. He explained that this landscape, characteristic of Chianti, is suited to growing quality wine grapes. He quickly signaled to show us the sign for the hamlet, Spedaluzzo, that we were passing through, just at this high point where the Greve River Valley comes into view. It was almost 2 P.M., and he advised that we stop for a pranzo chiantigiano (Chianti lunch) in Greve, Chianti’s historic market town. We parked just beyond Greve’s arcaded piazza. As we walked under one of the arcades we saw the vendors from the weekly Saturday market closing up their stalls in the piazza. In the middle stood a statue of Greve’s most famous son, the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. We walked up a flight of stairs to the Locanda di Greve restaurant, on the second level of the arcade. We chose a corner table outdoors, under the veranda and overlooking the piazza. Montorselli summarily ordered a “vera bistecca” (true steak) of Chianina beef weighing more than a kilogram (2.2 pounds) and a side of fagioli zolfini (a variety of Tuscan white beans from the pre-Apennine mountain range known as the Pratomagno) for us to share. He double-checked with the restaurant’s owner that the bistecca came from Greve’s Antica Macelleria Falorni, the respected butcher across the square (actually a triangle). Montorselli lamented how rare it is to find a restaurant in Tuscany that still knows how to properly grill a bistecca. When our meal was served, he showed us that the chef had grilled the four-inch T-bone on the front, back, and side so that the rare beef was heated all the way to the bone. Montorselli proudly concluded that the chef “ha messo un po’ di anima” (had put a little soul) into this steak. For him, a bistecca with a little radicchio and olive oil was the essence of an authentic Chianti pranzo. There was no need for fronzoli (finery)! The wine should be pronta beva (ready to drink)—young, fresh, and loaded with natural acidity, he added. We ordered a bottle of the 2013 Chianti Classico (100 percent Sangiovese) from the Molino di Grace estate in Panzano. The vera bistecca found its perfect mate that afternoon.
After lunch we mentioned to Montorselli that I had lived with a family from Greve in the early 1980s when I was studying on a fellowship at the University of Florence. He asked their name and I told him, “Anichini.” He asked, “Beppe Anichini at Le Corti?” Yes, I replied, Beppe and Mirella Anichini. Montorselli told us that the family still lives at Le Corti, between Ruffoli and Lamole. He also recounted how Beppe’s father, Angiolo Anichini, of the Fattoria Le Corti estate (not related to the estate Le Corti Corsini in San Casciano), went to Radda on May 14, 1924 (days after his wedding to Beppe’s mother, Clementina), to pledge his support for Chianti’s first consortium of winegrowers—and because of his initials, A.A., was the first official member of the Consorzio del Gallo. The Anichinis’ estate is one of the four or five surviving estates of the original consorzio. As we drove south from Greve on Via Chiantigiana, Montorselli indicated the strada bianca (gravel road) near a stand of tall white poplars with the sign for Le Corti. While heading to the town of Gaiole, he called Beppe Anichini on the car’s speakerphone, and we planned a reunion for the following weekend. Our sage guide had uncovered yet another hidden road.
At the main intersection in Panzano, we headed southeast on smaller provincial roads until we reached SR429 near Radda. We drove east, in the direction of the medieval abbey La Badia a Coltibuono northeast of Gaiole. Before reaching it we took a sharp right-hand turn (and several tight curves) and then passed Monte Cetamura, the hilltop site at 695 meters (2,280 feet) of an Etruscan artisanal colony. Among the early finds here was a small ceramic cup with a curved inscription on its intact base spelling CLUNTNI in the Etruscan alphabet. This object inspired some archaeologists to question whether Cluntni was the Etruscan name for Chianti.7 Other archaeologists theorize that it was an Etruscan surname (and the inscription thus identified the cup as belonging to the Cluntni family). As we pondered the mysteries of Cetamura, we headed south to the township of Gaiole in Chianti. Unlike Castellina and Radda, which were both fortified towns, this was a mercatale (market town). It was built along Massellone Creek, a tributary of the Arbia River. (Some historians contend that the Etruscan name for this creek must have been the origin of Chianti as a hydronym, given that the Massellone cuts through what was historically referred to as the Chianti Valley.)8 Montorselli parked his car in the center of town along the side of the main road so we could get out and see the legendary Massellone. But there was not even a stream to behold in the stony riverbed below the town’s walls. Montorselli explained that after the winter rainfall, the Massellone would flow again. The prior weekend, the town had been flowing with thousands of cyclists and classic cycling fans on their annual pilgrimage to Gaiole to participate in the race known as L’Eroica (The heroic).
Our steadfast guide reminded us that the sun would be setting in a couple of hours and we still had many roads to traverse. We drove through Gaiole and then took a left on SP73 to head eastward to the Chianti Mountains. Along the way, several motorcyclists on bright red and yellow Ducatis zoomed past our sedan. One after the other leaned into each banked turn as if racing on a superbike track. Montorselli blasted his horn and shouted, “Imbecile, you chase a short life!” He recounted the story of a wine estate owner in the 1980s who would take his Ferrari out on the dirt roads near his property in Castellina to race at more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour. Every time Montorselli was scheduled to travel those roads for work, he would call the estate to confirm that the owner was planning to be at home!
After we reached Monte Luco in the Chianti Mountains, at 834 meters (2,736 feet) above sea level, Montorselli took us on an even narrower rural road to see the hamlet of Starda (with its eponymous castle and wine estate) on the eastern edge of Chianti. There we found what looked like a small Alpine village. It seemed a world away from the lower hills in Gaiole. We then traced our path back through the woods to Monte Luco and turned left to travel south on the ridge that divides Chianti from Valdarno. Glimpses of the verdant Arno River Valley and the Pratomagno to the east punctuated the columns of chestnut and oak trees. Along the way, our expert scout located the gravestone-shaped marker, jutting out from the forest floor, that indicates the source of the Ombrone River. As the road descended and the softer hills of Chianti Senese widened our vista, we could see the city of Siena in the distance. Once we reached the medieval village of San Gusmè, we took a right-hand turn and headed west on SS484. Montorselli stopped the car by a vineyard along the road. He explained that this was the creation of the late Enzo Morganti, “un vero chiantigiano” (a true Chianti man). In the 1970s, while overseeing the demolition of San Felice’s old walled terraces and the planting of modern specialized vineyards, Morganti was traveling throughout Chianti to collect all of the historic vine varieties he could find. According to Montorselli, before the modern Chianti wine industry was born, estate owners planted different varieties “come spezie” (like spices) in their personal vineyard-gardens to make their estate wines distinctive. In this initial experimental vineyard of about 0.6 hectares (1.5 acres), Morganti had planted four vines of each of the 147 varieties he identified. This vineyard, now part of San Felice’s viticultural research project, named Vitiarium (signifying an arboretum or nursery of vine varieties, based on the Latin word vitis, “grapevine”), is a living library of Chianti’s viticultural past.
Our guiding spirit told us it was time to press on. He continued north in the direction of Gaiole until he found a dirt road that was almost hidden from view and looked like it would bring us back to the woods. Rather, within a few minutes we were on a high hilltop overlooking Castello di Brolio and Barone Ricasoli’s sprawling vineyards. The setting sun made the ancient castle, surrounded by its high ramparts, appear even more commanding. Montorselli pointed to the faint outline of a tower on an even higher hill to the distant north. It was the ruins of Castello di Montegrossi, dating from the eleventh century, the original stronghold of the Ricasoli-Firidolfi family.9 When the growing city-state of Florence had aimed to vanquish its imperial enemies in the twelfth century, it had attacked and destroyed this castle, the regional headquarters of the German emperor Frederick I. When the Aragonese and their Sienese allies had set out to conquer Florence in the late fifteenth century, they had besieged the rebuilt Castle of Montegrossi and demolished Brolio Castle (the symbolic cornerstone of Florence’s sovereignty in Chianti). Montorselli reported that these castle towers were built so each could signal the next allied castle in the distance. From Montegrossi in the Chianti Mountains southwest to the border of Siena is a chain of medieval castles that in various epochs were under the dominion of the Ricasoli-Firidolfi clan, including those of Vertine, Barbischio, Meleto, Tornano, San Polo in Rosso, Cacchiano, and San Giusto a Rentennano. Here in Chianti, Montorselli reminded us, the wine road is also a castle road.
The sun had set on our Chianti journey and it was time to make our way home to Poggibonsi. Driving south from Brolio we passed San Giusto a Rentennano and then took the first left on to SP408 di Montevarchi (also known as the Chiantigiana Vecchia), which runs southwest along Massellone Creek and the Arbia River through Chianti Senese and then to Siena. We passed the town of Pianella and headed west to Siena. When we reached the Siena Nord entrance to the Superstrada del Palio (the fastest route from Siena to Poggibonsi), Montorselli saw that it was blocked to traffic. He nimbly steered us to the Vecchia Cassia (now known as SR2), the old Roman road that links Rome to Florence. Our pilota (pilot) warned us that we could expect “tante curve e controcurve” (many serpentine curves). He explained that this stretch of the Vecchia Cassia was used for the Siena-to-Florence segment of the legendary Mille Miglia car race until 1957. The night was upon us, but Montorselli navigated these curves as if he were at the helm of a vintage Mercedes in our own running of the Mille Miglia. Below the medieval town of Monteriggioni, “crowned with towers,”10 we merged on to the Superstrada del Palio and swiftly arrived at the exit for Poggibonsi Nord.
We climbed our way up the winding single-lane road leading to our agriturismo at Fattoria di Cinciano with only the shadows of the colossal cypresses as our guideposts. On reaching our farmhouse, Montorselli checked his odometer and announced that our journey had taken us 340 kilometers (211 miles) around Chianti’s hidden roads. We sat in the car and spoke with him for another fifteen minutes before getting out and saying our good-byes. The stars flickered against the clear midnight-blue sky. Our knowing and truthful guide expressed his highest hope (speranza) for Chianti Classico—“di unire il vino Chianti Classico alla cultura e la bellezza del Chianti, il territorio” (to unite Chianti Classico wine to the culture and beauty of Chianti, the territory). Only in this way will the world know the true Chianti. We share this hope.