10

CHIANTI CLASSICO WINEGROWERS BY SUBZONE

We cannot profile all the grower-bottlers of Chianti Classico, which number about 380, only a selection. We list them below by subzone (see chapter 6 for an explanation of our system of subzones). Our rationale for selection follows from our preference for small to midsize artisanal producers who farm their own vineyards and make their own wine, particularly those who make a living off their wine. If we were to use only these criteria, however, we would not be revealing Chianti Classico, because such producers are a small minority there. When we visited, we were also in search of the history and culture of Chianti. Hence, we cast a broader net and followed leads that we discovered along the way. We let our itinerary evolve organically. During our research period, from early 2014 to mid-2015, we focused on tasting Chianti Classico and Sangiovese-based IGT wines. In the spring of 2015, producers voluntarily submitted wines to the Chianti Classico consortium in response to my request for the 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 vintages. I wanted five samples from each producer. I chose 2011, 2012, and 2013 because they were the most recent vintages that would be in the cellars. I skipped the 2009 vintage because its growing season was warmer than 2008, hence less likely to represent typical Chianti Classico. Vintages older than 2008 were unlikely to be in the cellars of most producers. I tasted these wines blind. We also sampled wines, blind or otherwise, at various public events and producer visits.

GROWING SEASON WEATHER

2013: cool, wet spring; warm late July, August; then mild; rain late September, early October

2012: April, May rainy and cool; July, August very hot and dry; early September rain

2011: mild and rainy spring; hot end of June, early July; very hot August; mild September

2010: cool and rainy spring; sunny and dry end of June, early July; cool rest of season

2009: abundant spring rain; warm early May; June rain; hot and dry July, August

2008: mild and rainy May, June; hot and dry July, August; dry and mild September

RADDA IN CHIANTI

CAPARSA

The first time I visited Caparsa was in June 2003. At the time, I was in search of wines made by vignaioli that were so pure that they would show their origin. In those days, nearly all Chianti Classicos included international varieties. Cristiano Castagno, a winemaker in San Casciano, had been helping Paolo Cianferoni with a wine called Caparsino. He wrote to me recommending Cianferoni as making “exceptional traditional and purist wines. He is a no-compromise guy.” It is difficult to get the inside word about what is going on in the cellars of Chianti Classico, and Castagno is someone to listen to. I went to Caparsa and met Paolo, who gave me a bottle of Caparsino. It was made of Sangiovese and Canaiolo. A few days later, at a blind tasting of “true Chianti wine” (i.e., made only from native grapes) hosted by nearby Poggerino, the wine held its own against the likes of Montevertine, Isole e Olena, and Le Boncie. Its pale color and delicate fruit showed its cool-climate Radda origin.

MAP 3

Radda in Chianti.

Fast-forward eleven years, to May 2014. We arrived at Caparsa and knocked on the door. Cianferoni came out to greet us. His dark brown hair now had streaks of gray. He was dressed in a blue jumpsuit and had a flashlight strapped to his forehead. He brought us into his cellar. On a barrel was a blowtorch. He was in the midst of conducting some sort of chemical test for acidity, sulfites, or another component of the wine. He excused himself and finished the test. The cavelike room was the reception room for his wine cellar. Behind him was a vivid drawing of two contadini waving their arms in front of a fiasco. Part of the drawing is reproduced on the label of Caparsino. Off to the left, we could see deeper into his cellar, where there were several passageways with large barrels, concrete tanks, and steel tanks. The cellar was pristinely clean but old, from a very old podere.

Cianferoni’s father, Reginaldo, came from a mezzadro family, became a professor of agriculture at the University of Florence, and wrote about Chianti’s troubled economy of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He bought the estate in 1965. When Paolo was eight years old, he began to work there, learning how to tend plants from the resident farmer. By 1982, he was running it. His wife Gianna, who grew up in a local mezzadro family, helps him. Since those early days, Cianferoni said, “fatto contadino” (I have been a farmer).

He excused himself so that he could dress in garb suitable for receiving journalists: clean baggy jeans and a chamois shirt. He took us into his vineyards, which face north and are at about four hundred meters (1,312 feet) of elevation, and showed us one vineyard with white alberese stones with streaks of quartz and a second vineyard loaded with fine gray chips of galestro. “The galestro always stays dry. There is never any mold here,” he told us. Galestro is his favorite soil type.

We came back to visit six months later with his consulting enologist, Fred Staderini. This time Cianferoni appeared in a brilliant red jumpsuit. We descended into the cellar, into a warren of tanks and barrels. Staderini grabbed a book from a desk and wrote the date. This is the winery diary, into which he puts all his observations and advice.

The 2014 harvest had been a challenge. Rain had fallen just before, and botrytis had attacked some of the grapes. From the affected Sangiovese, Cianferoni had made a base wine for rosé. Since botrytis affects only the skin, the juice inside was fine, and so was the wine, very crisp. We also tasted an IGT red wine from that year. Cianferoni was surprised by how much color he had been able to get from the grapes. The four of us continued going from tank to tank. Staderini would sample the wine, write in the diary, and discuss his observations. Cianferoni would quizzically look up, sometimes to disagree as if his children had been criticized and he was defending them. After draining wine from a tank into our glasses, he would clean off the spigot by blowing on it. ( I can still hear that high-pitched whistle!) Then we would move on to the next tank, and to the tanks in another cellar. Finally we ended up in the deepest and oldest cellar in the house and tasted Chianti Classico wines from big barrels. Cianferoni said that he had abandoned barriques. There was a shiny red mold on one spot on a wall. Maybe it was red from drinking the Chianti Classico in the air. Before we left, we sampled some Chianti Classico. Though he lost 75 percent of his crop in 2010, his Chianti Classico for that year was complex and astringent, a wine to put away. The loss of part of the crop can allow the vines to concentrate elements in the juice as the remainder ripens. Cianferoni’s 2009, from a hotter year, had a woodsy smell, like balsam wood, and was earthy. His 2008 was like the 2010, very astringent and in need of more time in bottle. His 2006 was spicier but also astringent. The earthy nuances came from the place and from Paolo. On our way out, we shook hands, and Cianferoni, turning off to go to work, said, “Lavoro qui non ci manca,” “There is always work to do here.” Caparsino is a Chianti Classico Riserva. It is now about 95 percent Sangiovese, the balance being other native grapes. About twenty thousand bottles are produced each year.

CASTELLO DI VOLPAIA

When Giovannella Stianti married Carlo Mascheroni from Milan in 1972, her father, Raffaello, the owner of a San Casciano printing company, gave them a large part of the fortified village of Volpaia as a wedding present. Today the couple owns about two-thirds of the village, including its most impressive palace. They named their estate, Castello di Volpaia, after the village’s castle, which is now home to the estate’s wine shop and osteria. Over the years, they have renovated most of its structures, including the winemaking facility.

I remember walking into the nave of a deconsecrated church in the center of Volpaia. Looking up, I saw the clear blue sky. There was something silvery spinning down. Was this the epiphany I had been waiting for? No, it was a new stainless steel tank being lowered through the roof by a huge crane. This deconsecrated church and two others now house maturing wine. The next time you have a glass of Volpaia, be mindful that its maturation probably occurred where wine was once part of a sacrament. Underneath the medieval alleys, pipes take wine from two vinification areas to the basements of buildings where it matures in thirty-hectoliter (793-gallon) barrels and barriques.

A winding road brings one down to Volpaia from the high hills that reach over to Panzano. Another winding road brings one up from the Pesa River under the village of Radda. Radda faces off against the diminutive Volpaia like a hawk glaring at a sparrow. Periodically along the road up to the fortified village, signs, like sentinels, stand watch over vineyards, identifying each by name.

In the 1990s, Maurizio Castelli, who was then the estate’s consulting enologist, drove me up to Volpaia, explaining that the soil was sandier as we climbed. He told me that because of the sand, the wines of Volpaia are pale and delicate. Castelli, Volpaia, and most of all a glass of Coltassala, Volpaia’s single-vineyard Sangiovese-Mammolo blend, taught me that fine Chianti Classico is not necessarily better if it is darker, more alcoholic, and more astringent. In the mid-1990s, Coltassala was a vino da tavola. It had no white grapes and could not be classified as a Chianti Classico. In those years, the Super Tuscan marketing category was the rage. Now it is a Chianti Classico Riserva. Yes!

Because the grapes for Coltassala are grown near the top of a hill on sandy soil, these wines are extremely light. To commemorate my first visit, I recently opened a 1994 and a 1995 from my cellar. The 1994 was pale and delicate, at the end of its life and the beginning of its spiritual journey. The 1995, though also pale, had a steely acidity and astringency. This wine was perfect and could go on for years more. Who says pale Sangiovese is short lived?

Throughout the 1990s and the early 2000s, journalists considered the pale color and delicate structure of Volpaia wines signs of weakness. At the beginning of the new millennium, the production team changed. Castelli left. Lorenzo Regoli became the full-time winemaker and Riccardo Cotarella the consulting enologist. Right off the bat, I noticed that the wines were darker and thicker. I am happy to report, however, that they have returned to their former style, and I love them.

Volpaia’s entry in the Gran Selezione category is its Il Puro. The grapes are one hundred percent Sangiovese and come from a vineyard site just below Coltassala, Casanuova, which is slightly warmer. These two factors, among others, make this wine richer and more structured than the Coltassala. Both the 2010 and the 2011 Il Puro have more oak in the nose than I tend to like. I slightly preferred the 2010 to the 2011, which had too-ripe fruit in the nose. I remain faithful to Coltassala. The 2011, though a notch down in the Riserva category, was one of the best wines that I tasted in 2015. It had spicy red fruit and was sour and sinewy in the mouth, chewy but good. A 2008 Coltassala was even better. The additional age had smoothed it out, and it was moving into its sweet spot. The 2011 Chianti Classico Riserva was similar to the 2011 Coltassala but had a riper fruit nose. The 2008 Chianti Classico Riserva was as good as the 2008 Coltassala. Try the 2011 Chianti Classico annata, nearly as good as the 2011 Il Puro, but lower in cost.

MONTEMAGGIO

You get to Montemaggio by driving on a dirt road that runs through the hills between Panzano and Radda. During the dry summer your car stirs up a cloud of dust. Mounds of gray galestro pop up along the way. Near Montemaggio, Radda perches, owl-like, on a forested ridge to the south of the road. After a right turn, there is an imperious iron gate, then another one. Then you arrive at a hamlet, Montemaggio. Vineyards, about eight hectares (twenty acres), spread out in a fan below. You are at five hundred meters (1,640 feet) above sea level. A short stone tower built in the fourteenth century rises amid the estate’s buildings. It is pictured in Piante di popoli e strade, a road map first published in the late sixteenth century. The road leading to the estate was built by the Romans.

After arriving, you will likely meet Valeria Zavadnikova, born in Vladivostok, raised in Moscow, schooled in law in London, and here to manage the estate, particularly the commercial side, for her Russian parents, the owners. Her hobby is gardening, and the gardens around the hamlet are lush. You may also meet Ilaria Anichini, whose ancestors have been landholding farmers in the Ruffoli area of Greve since 1424. Her uncle Beppe still farms several hectares there. She is Chianti-Chianti. She has an agronomy degree from the University of Florence and did a stint at a winery in Grampians, Australia. She also assisted with the Chianti Classico 2000 project. Anichini manages the estate on a day-to-day basis, specifically everything to do with growing the grapes and making the wine. That this is an estate powered by women is underlined by the Montemaggio wine label, which features an Etruscan woman carrying a basket of black grapes. Unlike their counterparts in ancient Greek and Roman culture, Etruscan women were equal in status to men.

The estate features three Chianti Classicos, one annata, one Riserva, and one Gran Selezione, all of which have a blend of Sangiovese with 5 to 7 percent Merlot. The average age of the vines used for the annata is less, about seventeen years versus about twenty-two for the Riserva and Gran Selezione. The wines are made in similar ways, using stainless steel and cement tanks for vinification and different oak barrel formats for maturation: barriques, tonneaux, and increasingly thirty-hectoliter (793-gallon) casks. The Riserva and Gran Selezione may “pass through” (i.e., be briefly stored in) barriques, to pick up additional aroma and texture. The concern, though, is to keep new-oak influence low. The maturation periods in large cask are long for Chianti Classico, two years for annata and three for Riserva. Differences are slight between Riserva and Gran Selezione, showing that for small-to-medium estates like Montemaggio, a new product tier such as Gran Selezione can mean two’s company, three’s a crowd. Montemaggio wines usually have two to three years of bottle aging before commercialization. Hence, they reach markets when they are near maturity. The Chianti Classicos become more nuanced in aroma and softer on the palate with age. In the spring of 2015, I tasted the 2010 annata and the 2009 Riserva. Both were pale reddish-brown, with floral and fruity aromas, high acidity, and higher than average astringency.

MONTEVERTINE

At noon on June 1, 1967, the church bell at Radda rang. A hand extending from a white cuff broke the seal on the only envelope left at the church. It enclosed a bid for a podere built in the eleventh century on forty hectares (ninety-nine acres) of land. The church owned this podere, Montevertine, and was selling it to the highest bidder, Sergio Manetti.

The next year, Le Pergole Torte, “The twisted pergolas,” was planted, two hectares (five acres) with the coldest exposure imaginable in Chianti, north-northeast. By 1973, Manetti had sold his metal goods factory in Poggibonsi and invested all his money in Montevertine. Bruno Bini, born at the farm, stayed on as its manager. In May 2015, Martino Manetti, Sergio’s son, shook his head while recalling Bini: “He did everything.” Bini died in 2013.

Manetti shook things up. With the shiest man on the planet, Giulio Gambelli, at his side, he made the 1977 Le Pergole Torte, a single-vineyard, 100 percent Sangiovese. Unable to call it Chianti Classico because it contained no white grapes, he bottled it as a vino da tavola. Martino told me that his father had wanted to make a Brunello without calling it a Brunello. Such is the quiet battle that Chianti Classico wages with its Sienese rival. Manetti attracted much attention. Vittorio Fiore recalled that in the 1970s, when the average price for wine was three hundred lire per bottle, Manetti was selling his for seven thousand.

When he sent a sample of the 1981 Montevertine to the Chamber of Commerce for certification as a Chianti Classico, however, the tasters deemed, according to Martino, that it was “not perfect, especially if already bottled.” Manetti believed this was one of his best vintages. In anger, he took Montevertine out of the Chianti Classico consortium and labeled all his wine as vini da tavola. Martino vowed to his father, who died in 2000, that Montevertine would never rejoin the consortium. Iconoclasm flows in Manetti veins.

Montevertine sits defiantly atop a little hill in the valley north of the village of Radda. With eighteen hectares (forty-four acres) of vineyards at 425 meters (1,394 feet) of elevation, Martino, with the help of the consulting enologist Paolo Salvi, makes three “Chianti-like” wines: Le Pergole Torte, 100 percent Sangiovese and now a blend of the estate’s best grapes, 60 percent of which come from the Pergole Torte vineyard; Montevertine; and Pian del Ciampolo. The last two have a little Canaiolo and Colorino added. The winemaking is simple. The length of skin contact is based on the condition of the skins and the taste of the wine. Le Pergole Torte matures for twenty-four months, eighteen in large barrel and six in barrique. Montevertine has twenty-four months in large barrel and Pian del Ciampolo, Manetti’s easy-drinking “Chianti,” twelve. In March 2015, I tasted the 2011 and 2012 Montevertines. Both were a pale garnet color. The 2011 had cherry and balsam wood smells that were more attention getting than those of the floral 2012. Astringency was light in both. My notes for both were “Delicate but alcoholic.” The 2008 and 2010 Le Pergole Tortes were both paler than the two Montevertines. The nose of the 2010 was closed; that of the 2008, open. For the latter, I wrote, “Delicate, woodsy, reticent.” Both wines had plenty of acidity and astringency. The 2010 had more astringency and is a wine to put away. Recently I pulled a 1982 Le Pergole Torte out of my cellar to taste: “Light brown-red, orange rim; mature woodsy nose, delicate with no signs of oxidation; acid dominates with light astringency; almost refreshing to drink.” The price tag on the bottle said $13.99. A current vintage of Pian del Ciampolo is twice that price now.

POGGERINO

On my first visit to Chianti Classico, in 1992, I met Piero Lanza at Poggerino. He was with his consultant, Nicolò d’Afflitto. D’Afflitto had told me in advance that Lanza was not a typical Tuscan proprietor. Most hire professionals to do the work, which they perceive as lowly, on the estates they own, particularly in the vineyards. D’Afflitto, however, mentioned that Lanza preferred to do his own vineyard work. I learned in 2014 that while he was in high school earning a technical degree in agronomy, his organic chemistry teacher had inspired him to make Poggerino into something special. I remember shaking Lanza’s hand. The thick calluses confirmed what D’Afflitto had told me. Though from a shy person, it was a determined handshake.

Though he had lived in Naples as a boy, Lanza’s family had moved to the city of Florence in 1980 to provide him with a better education and a safer environment. He was a descendent of the Ginori Contis, a famous Florentine noble family of the Middle Ages. In 1940, his grandfather had bought the palace just up the road from Poggerino, Castello d’Albola. His uncle managed it until 1979, when it was sold to Zonin. Chickens were running loose in the palace at the time of purchase, Michele Zonin later recalled. Lanza’s mother inherited the much smaller Poggerino estate down the hill, which he and his sister, Benedetta, now own. At that first visit, Lanza shook his head, saying that if he had only inherited Castello d’Albola’s vineyards, he could really make great wine. Soon after, I learned that D’Afflitto had taken on more responsibility at Frescobaldi and had to stop consulting at Poggerino.

Over the years, whenever I shook Lanza’s hand, the calluses were there. Nevertheless, I would tease him that his hands were getting softer. He would smile, wag his finger, and shake his head. Lanza has step by step perfected every aspect of the estate. The wines are now so good that he no longer envies Castello d’Albola.

During our October 2014 visit, he brought us into his vineyards. Poggerino comprises eleven hectares (twenty-seven acres) of vineyards at about 450 meters (1,476 feet) of altitude. Its production is now about forty-five thousand bottles per year. The first thing that Lanza took us to see was a pile of pastel-gray galestro. He picked up a chunk and dropped it on the ground. It exploded into a thousand slivers of clay. “This is galestro.” he said.

Not a leaf seemed out of place. Cover crops varied row by row and up and down the gradient. Some gave the soil vigor, some used it up, and others just protected against erosion. Instead of pruning the tops off the vines in June, Lanza braids them around their row’s upper wire. This keeps them from pushing out lateral shoots into the fruit zone, which would restrict its airflow and take nutrients away from fruit development. Lanza gave us a demonstration of how to braid the shoots and how to prune a vine trained in the Guyot system. Unlike other farmers, who generally prefer low-vigor rootstocks to reduce vegetation and hence labor, he prefers higher-vigor ones, even SO4, because he would rather have extra vigor to reduce than have to enhance it through fertilization or another means.

In the winery, as impeccably maintained as the vineyards, he is evolving from barriques and even tonneaux toward larger-format wood, particularly twenty-five-hectoliter (660-gallon) ovals of Slavonian oak. We tasted barrel samples from the 2013 vintage that Lanza had selected to become part of his Riserva Chianti Classico blend, Bugialla. He pulled a column of dark wine from a new 500-liter (132-gallon) French barrel. It was thick, velvety. Then we tasted the same wine from a large two-year-old Slavonian oak cask. Lanza exclaimed, “What acidity! This is Radda.” We agreed that it was more elegant, less thick, and less wood scented. It seemed a crime to us to mix it with the more strongly oaked portion. Though we understand that it is not wise to shock customers with sudden changes, we hope someday to taste Bugialla that has matured in only Slavonian oak. Typically, 90 percent of Lanza’s Chianti Classico annata matures in such casks. We prefer it to his other wines. When he has excellent skin ripeness, he is willing to do macerations up to sixty days. This is risky, but it makes great Chianti.

His 2011 Chianti Classico annata was one of the purest and most refreshing wines that we tasted in Chianti. Surprisingly, that growing season was unrelentingly hot and dry. The wine’s high acidity, however, complemented a brilliant cherry smell and the nuances of wild yeast fermentation. In comparison, the 2009 Bugialla Riserva, also from a hot vintage, had more licorice from the oak and was coarser and more astringent, probably also from the oak. The Bugialla vineyard is the most prized of the estate. It was planted in 1973. In 2003 and 2006, four of the five hectares of Bugialla were replanted, leaving the remaining one hectare (1.5 acres) with the original vines.

One of Lanza’s interests outside winemaking is following Formula 1 racing. Being a winner in Formula 1 requires paying attention to detail and constantly making improvements. Lanza has done just this since our first meeting in the early 1990s. Though he may dream of being a driver on the Ferrari team, the calluses on his hands identify him as a farmer.

GAIOLE IN CHIANTI

BADIA A COLTIBUONO

We drove up a winding road through woods. Badia a Coltibuono, an isolated, walled abbey, rose out of a clearing. The abbey has been here, in the northeastern corner of Gaiole, since 1051. Emanuela Stucchi Prinetti greeted us. She had just arrived from Hong Kong and was excited because the Hong Kong Jockey Club had showcased Badia a Coltibuono wines in an event and put the annata on its wine list. A few minutes later, her brother Roberto arrived. He has studied agronomy in Italy and viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis. Initially, Emanuela helped her mother, Lorenza de’ Medici, to establish the Badia cooking school and to write books. Later, her enthusiasm and marketing skills got Badia on to the world stage. Roberto, whose energy is hidden beneath a quiet demeanor, has been a pioneer in biologic agriculture. Moreover, he has protected the genetic patrimony of the estate’s vineyards by overseeing the mass selection of its oldest vines. His search for purity has always been reflected in the wines. They are simply complex. If you ever visit the estate, allow enough time to have lunch or dinner at its restaurant, Coltibuono, where brother Paolo, the creative Stucchi Prinetti, shows how perfectly Badia’s wines and famous olive oils, homegrown ingredients, and his kitchen’s creations take the word terroir to another level.

MAP 4

Gaiole in Chianti.

The badia is at 625 meters (2,051 feet) of altitude, too high for grapes to regularly mature. Its vineyards and winery are at the southern end of Gaiole and a much lower altitude, about 350 meters (1,148 feet). The topsoil there is calcareous clay, not sand like at the nearby San Giusto a Rentennano, an estate that was formerly a nunnery. These factors make Badia a Coltibuono’s wines richer and fuller than one would expect.

Its annata wines mature for one year and its Riserva wines for two, all in large oak casks. The use of large casks and the absence of international varieties bring the taster directly into the flavor and sensorial world of Chianti Classico: cherries, refreshing tartness, and a sharp edge of astringency. I tasted the 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2008 annatas. My notes were similar for all of these except the 2008, in which woodsy and rose-water smells had pushed in front of the cherry ones. This is just a sign of age.

I also tasted the 2010, 2009, and 2008 Riservas. The 2009 had some orange at the rim and smelled of cinders and iron filings. The 2010 and 2008 were fresher and livelier, though the 2010 had riper fruit flavors. It may be that since the 2009 vintage was hotter than both the 2010 and the 2008, it had matured more rapidly, possibly because of lower acidity or any of several other factors. In any case, it showcased the tertiary aromas of aging, cinders and iron filings, rather than the fresher fruit of a “younger” wine.

The Coltus Boni Chianti Classico 2010 is a mix of the zone’s historic and most promising native blending varieties—Canaiolo, Ciliegiolo, Foglia Tonda, Malvasia Nera, Mammolo, Pugnitello, and Sanforte—with a balance of 80 percent Sangiovese. It was dark for a Chianti Classico, probably because of the Pugnitello, and had a spicy, floral, minty character from new toasted oak. Though its texture was thick and unfiltered, it was low in astringency.

The wine named Sangioveto is a 100 percent Sangiovese Super Tuscan. I sampled the 2010 and 2009. Both lacked fruit and had celery in the nose, an indication of age, and were soft and round in the mouth. Perhaps macerations of a month or more and two-year maturations in toasted barriques had conquered the fruit.

BARONE RICASOLI

In the mid-nineteenth century, Bettino Ricasoli’s dream was that his beloved Brolio wine would be on the dinner tables of the world’s most sophisticated consumers, but it seemed to evaporate a century later when Castello di Brolio passed from one multinational company to another.

As a professional photographer, Francesco Ricasoli had no premonition that he might have to fill in as winegrower for Bettino, his direct ancestor. When a contractual loophole gave him the opportunity to purchase Barone Ricasoli from Hardys, an Australian wine company, at a bargain price, for a moment he did not know what to do. He sought advice from Ser Lapo Mazzei of Fonterutoli, who replied without hesitation, “You must get it back.” So Ricasoli leaped, and in 1993, after all hope had seemed lost, the third great-grandson of the architect of Chianti wine gained ownership of Castello di Brolio.

His venture had the support of an economic boom and a skyrocketing interest in Tuscan wine. There could not have been a better moment to make the deal. The Mazzei family’s background in banking was a helpful resource when Ricasoli needed know-how and contacts to assemble a small group of investors. Filippo Mazzei, Lapo’s son, became a minority investor and brought to Brolio the benefits of his experience managing Fonterutoli, along with specialists from the team there to ensure a smooth takeoff. By keeping a tight budget and paying debts on schedule, Barone Ricasoli emerged as a profitable business. Over the years, Ricasoli has bought out several of the investors and now owns about 95 percent of the company’s shares.

He also reestablished Bettino Ricasoli’s focus on experimentation and practical research. With the financial assistance of the Italian government, Ricasoli supported a three-year zonation study that described in detail the agronomic potential of the Castello di Brolio property.1 This could become the model for the zonation study that Chianti Classico currently lacks. Moreover, he supported the publication of Alla ricerca del “vino perfetto”: Il Chianti del barone di Brolio, a study by Zeffiro Ciuffoletti that clarifies Bettino Ricasoli’s work in arriving at the Chianti recipe.²

The estate’s viticultural team has undertaken the challenge of recovering the genetic identity of what was resident at Brolio in the late nineteenth century. They made trial plantings of fifty selected Sangiovese biotypes, then a further selection based on performance in the vineyard and in microvinification. Of those fifty, two were eventually selected and added to Italy’s National Registry of Grape Varieties, as clone I-CRA-BR1872 and clone I-CRA-BR1141, respectively. Ricasoli will allow nurseries to make them available to everyone.

Barone Ricasoli’s 230 hectares (568 acres) of vineyards are more than any other private estate owns in Chianti Classico. They are nearly all in Gaiole, with a small number of hectares extending into Castelnuovo Berardenga. Altitudes vary greatly, from 190 to 490 meters (623 to 1,608 feet) above sea level. Exposures are mostly south and southwest. Most of Brolio’s vineyards have been replanted since the mid-1990s in modern cultivation systems. The soils are predominantly calcareous clay with alberese stone. Altitude is the principal variant. Hence, vineyards at different altitudes excel in different years. The combination of the soils, excellent air drainage, and mostly southern exposures facing an unobstructed horizon provides Ricasoli with the potential to make wines that are full-bodied, powerful, and elegant.

Barone Ricasoli has five Chianti Classico labels. One of them, the Rocca Guicciarda Chianti Classico Riserva, I have not tasted recently. The estate technical sheet for the 2013 vintage, which is downloadable from the Castello di Brolio website, says that it’s in a “traditional style.” The blend is at least 80 percent Sangiovese, with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon filling it out. While the blend is not “traditional,” its listed maturation is fifteen months in tonneaux and big barrels.

I sampled a wine from each of the four other labels. A 2012 Brolio Chianti Classico annata had a floral, minty, ripe-fruit, and oaky nose. In the mouth, the wine had dominant alcohol and low astringency. Overall, it was pleasant, with well-integrated components, a wine to drink within a few years. A 2011 Brolio Chianti Classico Riserva had more new oak in the nose, plus cocoa and toasted notes, smells associated with oak more than fruit. It had considerably more structure than the previous wine in the mouth, with more astringency and slightly more viscosity. The “château” wine is simply called Castello di Brolio. Château labeling is the French châteaux’ practice of marketing and labeling what they deem is their best wine. The name of the château—for example, Château Margaux—is both the name of the brand and the calling card wine. Its production is usually the château’s greatest. In Brolio’s case, the word castello stands in for the word château. The Castello di Brolio château label has a historic image of Brolio castle. It is grand. I sampled the 2010 Castello di Brolio, a Gran Selezione. Charred oak and flowers are dominant in the nose, the icing atop a wine with a soft, complex texture. The blend is 80 percent Sangiovese, 15 percent Merlot, and 5 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. The estate’s other Gran Selezione is the Colledilà, whose name means “hill over there” in Italian. The art on the label derives from a late sixteenth-century drawing around the base of the Ricasoli family tree. The images of snakes and other animals, knights on horses, castles, and rivers are both charming and fascinating. While you enjoy the wine, be sure to entertain yourself with the label. This wine is 100 percent Sangiovese. I tried the 2011, which has some black cherry to balance the toasted buttered bread (from oak) in the nose. In the mouth it is elegant, with a high level of fine, textured astringency. It tastes delicious now and should age nicely. Though not traditional in style, the 100 percent Sangiovese 2011 Colledilà is a superb and elegant drink.

CASTELLO DI AMA

When Tuscany’s grand duke Peter Leopold made his tour of Chianti in 1773, he observed that the three wealthy families living at “Amma” had extensive and impeccably cared-for vineyards. They exported all of their wine to England, where it was much esteemed.3 Giovanni Cosimo Villifranchi (the pen name of Saverio Manetti) wrote that the wines of Ama were “far superior to many of the best wines that come to us from other countries.”⁴

Although its reputation was established, Ama became much less visible during the nineteenth century. It resurfaced in 1972, when four Roman families established a wine company there. Improvements to the vineyards followed. One of the owners, Gianvittorio Cavanna, was involved at Fattoria di Ama, as it was then called, from the late 1970s until his untimely death in 1988. His love of wine brought energy and prestige to the estate, making it one of the most highly regarded of the 1980s. In 1982 he hired Marco Pallanti, an agronomist born in Florence, who then took winemaking courses at the University of Bordeaux to advance that particular skill. From 1980 to 1990, Silvano Formigli played a key role as the estate’s commercial director. In 1988, Lorenza Sebasti, representing the second generation of one of the winery’s founding families, moved from Rome to manage it. She married Pallanti in 1992. Since then, they have directed the winery together, he focusing on production, she on marketing and administration.

The wine estate Castello di Ama owns a well-preserved borgo that was the site of a castle until an Aragonese army destroyed it in the fifteenth century. This cluster of buildings has become a haven for artists and a showcase for their work. Pallanti said that just as he interprets the music of the terroir through his wines, the visiting artists do the same through their art.

The estate is in the northwest of Gaiole. In its immediate vicinity, alberese rock rises above or lies beneath a thin topsoil of calcareous clay. Castello di Ama has sixty-five hectares (161 acres) of vineyards dedicated to Chianti Classico in the rolling hills that surround the winery. They are at an average altitude of 480 meters (1,575 feet).

Castello di Ama has been famous for its single-vineyard wines, each named for its vineyard. In 1978, Bellavista, a single-vineyard Chianti Classico, was born. San Lorenzo, La Casuccia, and Bertinga, among others, joined its ranks in the following decade. This concept made the winery unique and chic. For Pallanti, it reflects his belief in the Burgundian wine aesthetic represented by the word terroir. On the other hand, in 2010 the estate took a step in the direction of Bordeaux with an estate Chianti Classico named Ama. The grapes come from vineyards that are younger and use more modern viticultural technologies than those of the single-vineyard wines.

I tasted Castello di Ama wines blind at two Chianti Classico consortium events, Chianti Classico Collection 2014 and 2015, both in February. Also in February 2015, I tasted some with Pallanti at a dinner that he hosted at the Castello di Ama restaurant. My experiences at each were different.

At the consortium events, the wines showed better, perhaps because in the context of sampling many wines from different producers, the bigger size of the Ama wines in the mouth underlined their positive characteristics. In February 2014, Ama featured a 2010 Gran Selezione for sampling. There was no vineyard listed on the label. The wine was very dark and had 10 percent Merlot and 5 percent Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend. It had some vegetative smells, perhaps due to the Cabernet Sauvignon, and was tart and astringent. The oak was not very evident. At the same event, an Ama from the 2011 vintage was very similar in style. It had more Sangiovese, 95 percent. A year later at another consortium tasting, Castello di Ama featured a Vigneto La Casuccia and a Vigneto San Lorenzo, both 2011 Gran Selezione wines. Both stood out for their high quality and had as yet unresolved oak in the nose.

During dinner at the Ama restaurant, I tasted a series of 2011 single-vineyard Gran Selezione wines: San Lorenzo, Bellavista, and La Casuccia. They tasted more oaky than before. I preferred the San Lorenzo because it had the least oak in the nose and was the least structured in the mouth. The La Casuccia and the Bellavista had nice spicy oak, not the vanilla-and-coconut-smelling sort, in the nose, but it obstructed the fruit. A 2006 Bellavista Chianti Classico, meanwhile, had evidently outlasted the oak and had a fine astringency.

Looking at my notes on the same wines tasted on different occasions underlines how much change rules in the world of flavor perception. A painting looks slightly different when hung in different rooms, thanks to changes in light and hues in the background. Flavor is even more sensitive than line and color to context. The perception of wine and the judgment of its quality are not absolute. They change. My experience of the Castello di Ama wines outlined in this profile highlights this phenomenon.

CASTELLO DI CACCHIANO

To the left of the road to Castello di Cacchiano is a small vineyard of densely planted and staked alberello vines. From its perch on a hill at four hundred meters (1,312 feet) of elevation, the castle, like a protective mother eagle with its brood, gazes over thirty-two hectares (seventy-nine acres) of vineyards and the village of Monti, sitting in calcareous clay-dominant soil with alberese stone. To the east is the dark ridge of the Monti del Chianti, below which Castello di Brolio slouches lionlike. To the south, verdant plateaus spread out like wide steps on a staircase. Farther in the distance are the rolling hills of the Crete Senesi. On a clear day, the Torre Mangia and the Duomo stick out of the gleaming white mass of buildings that is Siena in the sunlight. Beyond is the towering extinct volcano Mount Amiata.

The origins of the castle reach back to the Roman period. The Ricasolis have been its lords for more than a thousand years. Giovanni Ricasoli-Firidolfi, the current owner, took us in to look at the family archives. As he was lifting the lids off boxes laced up with ribbons, a laptop started sliding off a shelf. He caught it in midair and wiped his brow, saying, “That’s mummy’s laptop.” That the laptop of Elisabetta Balbi Valier, who died in 2004, is now part of the archives says as much about how strong and in touch with the present she was as about how much times have changed.

The Ricasoli-Firidolfi wines, reflecting Giovanni’s outlook on life, remain true to tradition. The pride of the estate is the vin santo, which Ricasoli-Firidolfi dotes on like a son. Taste the 2003, if you can find it! The Chianti Classicos are firm wines with strong edges of acidity and astringency. The 2010 is 95 percent Sangiovese, with Canaiolo, Malvasia Nera, and Colorino supporting its pure cherry fruit. The 2009 has more earth and cocoa, plus a diesel-leather nuance, perhaps the smell of older cask. The 2010 Riserva is a deeper reddish-brown, with black cherry and earthy smells. It has a thick, unfiltered taste and chewable, fine tannins. The 2007 Riserva was paler, with a cindery, ferrous nose, the sign of oncoming maturity. In the mouth, it had a dry, dusty, rich texture, being riper and more mature than the 2010. The 2006 Riserva had a little orange at the rim of the glass. A nutty, earthy, woodsy smell indicated that it had reached its peak. As nice as the 2010 and 2007, the 2006 Riserva is a wine to drink up, not to keep. The Millennio is Cacchiano’s Gran Selezione entry. I tasted the 2009 and 2010. The 2009 was darker. Both had powerful fruity noses with new-oak nuances. The 2009 also had mint and the 2008 balsam wood, but the 2008 had a younger, fresher taste.

SAN GIUSTO A RENTENNANO

San Giusto a Rentennano is at the southernmost tip of Gaiole. The name’s -ennano suffix indicates an Etruscan origin. The location’s official name is San Giusto alle Monache (San Giusto of the nuns). It was the site of a Cistercian abbey in the Middle Ages. The road into the estate moves through a bevy of trees and ends up at a clutch of buildings adjoining a thirteenth-century crenellated wall.

Luca Martini di Cigala took us around the estate. He arrived there in 1988 to work alongside his father, Enrico, and his older brother, Francesco. His older sister Elisabetta arrived in 1994. Luca does the viticulture, while Francesco directs the vinification and Elisabetta works in administration. Their mother was a Ricasoli. In 1957, their father inherited the estate. He was Piedmontese by ancestry.

Before our visit, Paolo Vagaggini, an enological consultant not connected to the estate, told us about an incident that reveals the spirit of the Martini di Cigala family. This was probably during the late 1950s or 1960s. Vagaggini’s father, Francesco, was working as an itinerant agronomist for the province of Siena’s cattedra ambulante di agricoltura, a free consultancy service that provinces provided for farms. While driving around looking for the home of Enrico Martini di Cigala, he saw a mezzadro working with a hoe near the road. Vagaggini stopped his car and asked for directions. The person with the hoe put it down and said, “I am here to serve you.” He was Enrico Martini di Cigala. Luca, Francesco, and Elisabetta have inherited their father’s humility.

During the 1980s, the farm belatedly made the transition from promiscuous to specialized vineyards. Promiscuous vineyards remain on four hectares (ten acres). Luca took us there to see testucchio training. The estate treasures its past. The last mezzadri were there until three or four years ago. Rosita Anichini, the daughter of a former mezzadro family associated with the estate, assists Francesco in the cantina.

The estate has thirty-one hectares (seventy-seven acres) of vines. Half of the vineyards are around the estate. They are at roughly three hundred meters (984 feet) above sea level. The topsoil there is silty sand, with small round stones and patches of fossilized mollusks. It is five to six meters (sixteen to twenty feet) deep over a bank of bluish clay, which harbors moisture. The sandy soil makes the wines pale, and the clay gives them structure. Another quarter of the vineyards are on galestro and alberese soil with some silt. The last piece, Corsignano, about two kilometers (1.2 miles) to the north between Lucignano and Monti, has galestro and alberese with some clay. It delivers wine with power.

The estate makes an annata and a Riserva Chianti Classico. The annata wines are about 95 percent Sangiovese, with the balance being Canaiolo. They mature in large oak casks and tonneaux for one year. The Riservas have the same mix but slightly more Sangiovese and mature for about eighteen months in barriques. San Giusto also makes an IGP, Percarlo. This wine comes from a selection of the best grapes from eight hectares (twenty acres) of high-performing vineyards. It is 100 percent Sangiovese and matures in barriques for about twenty-one months.

I tasted the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008, and 2007 Chianti Classicos. What struck me were the intense red fruit smells in all the wines. The 2013, because of its youth and the cool vintage, had a floral character. The 2012 was jammy. The 2011 had a cedary cherry nose. In the 2010, a diesel note joined the cherry. The 2008 was similar to the 2010 but also had an earthy smell, the result of bottle age. The 2007 had a young, explosive cherry nose. The 2010 and 2007 both had a tantalizing fine, lingering astringency, what I look for in wine.

I also tasted two vintages of the Riserva Le Baròncole, the 2011 and the 2005. The 2011 had new-oak smells and fine astringency in the mouth. In the 2005, the oak smells had become cindery with bottle age. There was also some oxidation in the nose.

I tasted the 2010, 2008, 2006, and 1999 vintages of Percarlo. Smells of new oak were dominant in all but the 1999. Its nose was mature, smelling of “dust, earth, and ripe plums,” according to my notes. All the vintages except the 1999 had more astringency than the annatas and the Riservas. That of the 1999 was delicate, fine, and lingering.

My tasting notes tell me that while the annata wines can be appreciated now and can last in great vintages, the Riserva Le Baròncole needs as much as five years and the Percarlo as much as ten or more of bottle aging to resolve their maturation in new oak barriques.

CASTELLINA IN CHIANTI

BIBBIANO

In 1999, Tommaso Marrocchesi Marzi, who was managing Bibbiano with his brother, Federico, contacted Stefano Porcinai because he knew that the vineyards were old and needed to be replanted. Many of the vines had died. Some were so old that their production was too low from an economic point of view. Others had been poorly trained and were too old to withstand the stress of retraining. The remaining vines were so weak that they needed to be green-harvested twice so that the fruit could mature. Giulio Gambelli was Bibbiano’s wine consultant. His principal interest was the cantina, where he offered advice on how to vinify, mature, and blend the wines. Marzi needed an expert who knew the latest in vineyard technology, particularly relating to the Chianti Classico area and the Sangiovese variety. He could not have made a better choice than Porcinai. From 1992 to 2001, Porcinai had been the technical director of the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico. He had managed the operation of Chianti Classico 2000, which had as its sole focus the replanting of the aging existing generation of vineyards. With his knowledge of the high-quality clones that were developed in that project, along with the results that its practical research had yielded on rootstock selection, vine density, vine training, cover crop use, and so forth (factors essential to integrate into the new vineyards), Porcinai began replanting one vineyard at a time. One of the first that he tackled is Bibbiano’s most famous and most historic, Capannino.

MAP 5

Castellina in Chianti.

Gambelli had brought cuttings from Sant’Angelo Scalo in Montalcino for the 1950s planting of the Capannino vineyard. He brought only Sangiovese. He knew Montalcino well because he traveled there often to assist his mentor, Tancredi Biondi Santi. Given his close friendship with and esteem for Marzi’s grandfather, Pier Tommaso Marzi, Gambelli was certain to have selected the best cuttings he could find.

The growing conditions of Bibbiano’s Capannino are not so different from those of many vineyards in Montalcino. They have about the same annual mean air temperature (14 to 15.3 degrees Celsius, or 57.2 to 59.5 degrees Fahrenheit) and average rainfall (sixty to seventy centimeters, or twenty-four to twenty-eight inches).5 Capannino’s exposure is southerly, as are many at the southern end of Montalcino. Clay dominates the soil at Capannino and at many of the lower-elevation sites in Montalcino. The comparison between Vigna del Capannino and Brunello di Montalcino is inescapable. Under Porcinai’s direction, in 2009 this 4.5-hectare (11-acre) vineyard was replanted with the original genetic material that Gambelli had selected in Montalcino. Porcinai used two rootstocks that are ideal for replanting a vineyard in clay, 775 Paulsen and 779 Paulsen, and tightened up the vine density to the modern standard of five thousand per hectare (2,023 per acre). Because wet clay can cause landslides, the installation of an underground drainage system was important. In areas where water had a tendency to collect, Porcinai dug trenches, filled them with a layer of large stones, laid perforated plastic piping on top, covered the piping with a fine mesh fabric to protect its holes, piled smaller rocks on top, and then put back the topsoil that had been dug up. The pipes vented the excess water away from the problem spots.

Porcinai also replanted the rest of Bibbiano’s twenty-five hectares (sixty-two acres), including the other cru, Montornello, a vineyard of thirteen hectares (thirty-two acres) with looser, less clayey soil and a more northerly exposure than Capannino. At Montornello, he used the same two rootstocks but five different clonal selections of Sangiovese. In the same way that a winemaker picks cuvées after vinification to construct the final blend, he chose these selections based on how their flavors, structures, and acidities would complement one another in the finished wine. He finished this project in 2012. The vineyards surround the Marzi villa and the winery. They are between 270 and 300 meters (886 and 984 feet) above sea level.

During the 2000s, Tommaso Marzi gradually took over the direction of the estate while Federico focused on another family business. While renovating the vineyards, Porcinai also consulted on the making of the wines. Gambelli continued to stop by and offer his opinion on their condition, and Porcinai learned from him how to maintain Bibbiano’s style so that it was continuous with the estate’s history. In January 2012, Gambelli passed away. But his spirit lives on at Bibbiano through the flavor of the wines, in the fond memories of the Marzis, and via the work of Porcinai.

The focus of Bibbiano has always been on Sangiovese. The style has been traditional, in that the smell and tactile impact of new toasted oak have never shown themselves in the finished wines. The Bibbiano annata is aged only in a cement tank. It is 95 percent Sangiovese and 5 percent Colorino. Tommaso Marzi says that Colorino was primarily planted to add brilliant red stripes to the harvest vineyard foliage. It may also darken and add a little astringent edge to this wine. The two cru wines are 100 percent Sangiovese. Barriques have been used to mature the Montornello for a relatively short twelve months. Vigna del Capannino matures for twenty-four months, the first twelve in a combination of five-hundred-liter (132-gallon) tonneaux, the last twelve in a twenty-hectoliter (528-gallon) cask of Slavonian oak. Porcinai says that the estate is transitioning away from barriques entirely, to cement, tonneaux, and large casks.

The Bibbiano Chianti Classico annata wines show how well Sangiovese can perform without contact with new oak barrels. They never touch oak. I tasted the 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2008 vintages. The color was on the pale side. The 2013 was remarkably substantial and solid for such a cool vintage. I tasted the 2012 on two occasions. It was from a hot growing season with a little rain close to the vintage. On one occasion my notes read, “Smells like Brunello di Montalcino.” On the other, my notes on the nose said, “Rich, vibrant, woodsy, deep red fruits,” and on the palate, “Angular, toothsome, aromatic.” The 2011 was a little too ripe in the nose, reflecting the extended high temperatures and drought of that vintage. The 2010 was on target for the vintage, with a complex, spicy, and fruity nose and higher than average acidity in the mouth. The nose of the 2008 showed its age with a musty, minty earthiness. However, in the mouth it had plenty of astringency.

The 2012 Montornello (labeled as a Riserva) and the 2010 Montornello both had more structure and a stronger astringent edge than the 2011. The 2010 came through with the high acidity for which that vintage is known. Except for a whiff of “cigarette smoke” in the 2012, per my notes, I could not detect any barrique character.

The Vigna del Capannino 2011, a Gran Selezione, showed the touch of superripeness that I associate with that vintage. It was big, juicy, and tart, loaded with astringency. In my notes for the 2010, also a Gran Selezione, I wrote, “Poggio di Sotto–type nose.” Poggio di Sotto, a former Gambelli client in Montalcino, has always been one of my favorite estates in Italy. The 2008, a Riserva, had “a penetrating earthy–floral–red fruit nose.” I smelled also some oak, but not too much. The mouth had “sweet fine tannins” and was “tart.”

CASTELLO DI FONTERUTOLI

Since 1435, the Mazzei family has owned the village of Fonterutoli. It is five kilometers (three miles) south of the village of Castellina on a road that rapidly descends toward Siena. The estate has been passed down through twenty-four generations. Members of two generations currently lead it: Ser Lapo, who is in his nineties and guides the estate, and his sons Filippo and Francesco, who manage its operation. Ser Lapo’s daughter, Agnese, an architect, designed the new state-of-the-art winery, 75 percent of which is built into the side of the hill beneath the village.

The Mazzeis own 111 hectares (274 acres) of vineyards, which mostly face south-southwest. There are five vineyard areas. The one in the immediate vicinity of the village, at 500 meters (1,640 feet) of elevation, has alberese soil. Just above the village, the Badiola vineyard, at 550 meters (1,804 feet), has galestro-based soil. Five kilometers (three miles) south of Fonterutoli at Belvedere, at 300 meters (984 feet), the soils are alberese and galestro. About 1.5 kilometers (one mile) to the west, Caggio, purchased in 2006, is at 300 meters and has alberese and clay soil. Siepi, on the western side of Castellina, at 220 meters (722 feet), is the home of their cru, a Merlot-Sangiovese wine. It has clay soil. Because of the differences in soil and, particularly, climate among the vineyards, Sangiovese is typically harvested on September 24 or 25 at Siepi and sometime between October 15 and October 20 at Badiola. The Mazzeis therefore have a variety of terroirs to work with.

At Fonterutoli, Merlot has been the vine variety that is most used to “help” Sangiovese in difficult vintages, when 5 to 6 percent may be added to the blend of Castello di Fonterutoli. The estate has only one hectare (2.5 acres) of Cabernet Sauvignon. Filippo Mazzei says that he wants “to valorize Sangiovese and go back to native grapes.” His nephew Lapo told us that the estate was transitioning from barriques to tonneaux. The 2010 Castello di Fonterutoli was the first vintage for that label that used tonneaux and did not include Cabernet Sauvignon.

Filippo told us that the estate’s philosophy is “work on diversity.” Every year the harvest is processed to make about 120 cuvées, which Carlo Ferrini, the agronomic and enological consultant since 1992, blends before bottling to make the various Mazzei wines. This strategy has been in place for about a decade. Previously the Fonterutoli team made fewer lots of wine and blended them earlier, in the spring after the harvest. The new method has the advantage of providing more blending options, 120 of them. Moreover, as wines they are more developed. Ferrini’s goal is to make dense and structured yet smooth and accessible wines. He knows exactly the appearance, smell, and texture profile he wants, and he blends to achieve it.

One day, Gionata Pulignani, the current technical director, and Luca Biffi, the former technical director, were constructing a wine from vinification lots made from Sangiovese clones and biotypes. Francesco Mazzei was curious about what they were doing. When he tasted the wine, he was so impressed that he decided Fonterutoli would start bottling it, under the name “Mix36” and the company brand, Mazzei. The first vintage was the 2008. The grapes come from the fourteen-hectare (thirty-five-acre) Vico Regio vineyard in the zone of Belvedere. The number 36 refers to the eighteen clones and eighteen biotypes that contribute to the wine. Seven of the biotypes have been selected from Fonterutoli’s oldest vines. The mix of the vinification lots accounts for the rest of the name.

Fonterutoli uses a château branding system. The estate’s most important wine is Castello di Fonterutoli, which is now in the Gran Selezione category. Its second wine is called simply Fonterutoli. Mix36 is an IGT, but its production protocol mimics that of a Chianti Classico. Other Chianti Classico wines are the Ser Lapo Riserva and Ser Lapo Riserva Privata. I have not sampled them.

According to its technical sheet, Castello di Fonterutoli uses only native grapes: Sangiovese, Malvasia Nera, and Colorino. Fonterutoli uses a little Merlot, and Mix36 is 100 percent Sangiovese. Tonneaux and barriques, 60 percent new, are used for Castello di Fonterutoli. Tonneaux and barriques, 40 percent new, are used for Fonterutoli. Mix36 has twenty months in tonneaux. I tasted the 2011 and 2010 Castello di Fonterutoli, the 2012 Fonterutoli, and the 2010 Mix36. The Castello di Fonterutolis had layers upon layers of soft, fine astringency in the mouth. The Fonterutoli had less. The Mix36 was slightly paler and had less thickness in the mouth. In all three wine types, toasted oak was dominant in the nose. The Mix36 was the least exotic in texture, but it was the one I preferred the most, because it had the most Sangiovese character. Fonterutoli is moving away from international varieties and barriques and toward tonneaux. These are positive developments for this historic estate.

NITTARDI

Nittardi is in the far north of Castellina, on the southern side of the Pesa River. Its nine hectares (twenty-two acres) of vineyards have an exciting terroir for Sangiovese. The altitude is about 450 meters (1,476 feet), which allows for a wide temperature variation. The soil is clay with both alberese and galestro.

Two bronze Minotaur busts by the German artist Paul Wunderlich alert visitors that something special is waiting for them. Nittardi does not disappoint. The owner is the Frankfurt publisher and art gallerist Peter Femfert. The sculpture garden alone is worth a visit. Each year a different artist designs the label and tissue paper for the estate’s brand, Casanuova di Nittardi. Moreover, the focus on art has historical relevance. Centuries ago, Nittardi belonged to the Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti.

Femfert has a great team behind him. His Venetian wife, Stefania Canali, a historian, is a match for him in wit and sophistication. One of their sons, Léon, has been dedicating himself to Nittardi since 2012. In preparation, he worked at wineries in the United States, France, Germany, and Chile. Giorgio Conte, the commercial director, has an agronomy degree. He has quietly and professionally managed the property since the early 1990s. Once Carlo Ferrini left his job at the Chianti Classico consortium, in 1991 he immediately took on Nittardi as a client. He has been shaping its wines since, in a way that allows the estate’s flavor profile to show itself. That profile expresses both the power of Panzano and the delicacy of Castellina Alta.

For many years, Casanuova di Nittardi was the estate’s second wine, after its Riserva. In 2012, Femfert presented it as a single-vineyard wine, Vigna Doghessa, and changed the blend to 100 percent Sangiovese. The 2010 Casanuova di Nittardi has an oak-dominant nose. In the mouth, it is smooth despite its astringency. The structure is impressive. The 2011 is 97 percent Sangiovese and 3 percent Canaiolo Nero and has aged for ten months in second-passage barriques—that is, those which have already held wine. It has some overripe character in the nose and is top heavy with alcohol in the mouth. Vigna Doghessa ages for fourteen months in tonneaux. The 2012 vintage, like the 2011, was hot, and the nose of the Vigna Doghessa from that year was very ripe, with an exotic smell of apricots. The richness of alcohol was balanced by astringency in the mouth. In neither the 2011 Casanuova di Nittardi nor the 2012 Vigna Doghessa did I perceive new oak in the nose.

The 2010 Nittardi Chianti Classico Riserva is a 95 percent Sangiovese, 5 percent Merlot blend with twenty-four months of aging in tonneaux. The wine has a deep color, perhaps due to the Merlot. The nose is very aromatic, with strong charred oak smells. The wine in the mouth has high acidity that matches the high levels of astringency and alcohol. It is quite concentrated and complex. With several years of bottle age, it will shed the oak nose and have a balanced nose to match its balanced palate.

In November 2014, Léon Femfert introduced the first vintage, the 2012, of the wine Belcanto. The grapes come from an area, San Quirico, close to the western border of Chianti Classico, just north of the vineyards of Villa Rosa. The terroir is similar to that of Nittardi, except with more galestro and less alberese and an altitude, 270 meters (886 feet) above sea level, that is lower by about 150 meters (492 feet). The blend is 90 percent Sangiovese and small amounts of Canaiolo, Malvasia Nera, Ciliegiolo, Mammolo, Colorino, Foglia Tonda, and Pugnitello. Quite a historic Chianti cast! Each of these varieties should add its unique character to the nose and mouth of the wine. Most of the vines were planted in 1968. The original selection was a mass selection. Because these vines are not nursery selections, their grapes are not likely to have thick skins, loose bunches, or early harvesting periods. The advanced age of the vines means they have a very low production. The resulting wine matures in used tonneaux for twelve months. The oak character should therefore be subdued.

I tasted the 2013 Belcanto, which is similar to the 2012 in both the grape blend and the use of tonneaux. The nose was fruity but also buttery and oaky. In the mouth, bitterness dominated the astringency, not necessarily a negative. It is the personality of the wine. On paper, this is a very exciting wine in terroir, varietal mix, and aging regimen. Perhaps the cool, wet vintage of 2013 did not allow the fruit to mature enough to offset the oak in the nose or allow the tannins in the grape skins to mature fully. This wine may be a harbinger of a change in style for Nittardi, to a focus on a range of native varieties and the use of larger-format oak for aging.

Peter Femfert has done an admirable job in taking this estate out of obscurity and making it a consistent high performer. The increasing influence of his son Léon seems to be moving it toward exposing terroir more directly by steering away from high-performance clonal selections, nonnative varieties, and barriques. Léon is carving out his own path for the Nittardi of the future.

POMONA

To understand Chianti completely, one must understand the mezzadria system. One way to do this is to connect to the spirit of a place. One such place is Villa Pomona at the southeast corner of Castellina. The original nucleus of buildings, a fattoria, dates from the eighteenth century (see figure 3). It was where mezzadri delivered that part of their production owed to the padrone, collected supplies, and performed a range of tasks stipulated by contract. The cluster of buildings includes the padrone’s villa, several poderi where mezzadri lived, a storehouse, stalls, and a wine cellar. Because of the presence of the right type of clay for making terra-cotta objects such as floor tiles, basins, and vases, the first owners built a kiln. Terra-cotta production became an important source of income. The kiln is no longer in use.

FIGURE 3

Villa Pomona in Castellina in Chianti: “then,” 1916. Left, a resident mezzadro family; right, the estate’s owners, Annamaria Bandini (the daughter of Bandino Bandini, who purchased the estate in 1899) and her husband, Mario Raspi, the grandparents of Monica Raspi, one of the current owners. Reproduced with permission from Monica Raspi, Villa Pomona, Castellina in Chianti.

Around the buildings are mixed plantings of woods, pastures, vineyards, gardens, and olive trees. Ingeborg Juergens, the matriarch of the Raspi family—who joins Monica, her daughter (see figure 4), and her sister-in-law, Fernanda Raspi, in the estate’s ownership, looks after the villa, which has two agriturismo units. The larger one, suitable for a large family, occupies the principal residence. The villa’s limonaia, a glassed-in, south-facing room where lemon trees and other frost-sensitive plants were sheltered during the winter months, has been renovated into a smaller rental unit. The elemental design of the rooms, stairs, and furniture preserves the simplicity of Chianti rural existence. There is no better way to absorb how Chiantigiani lived for centuries than to stay at Villa Pomona, reading Maria Bianca Viviani Della Robbia’s A Farm in Chianti and taking jaunts into the towns and countryside.6 It is difficult to find this book. When you arrive in Chianti, you can purchase it in Panzano at Villa Le Barone, formerly the home of the author and now a luxury hotel. Monica Raspi and her husband, Enrico Selvi, look after the vineyards and winemaking. The Chianti Classico production is quite limited, as it comes from only five hectares (twelve acres) of vineyards. They have a southerly exposure and are at 350 meters (1,148 feet) on calcareous clay soil peppered with alberese.

FIGURE 4

Villa Pomona in Castellina in Chianti: “now,” 2015. Right to left: Family owners of the estate Ingeborg Juergens and her daughter, Monica Raspi, with their vineyard and winery team, Sacha Simonte (from Castellina) and Akik Krasniki (from Kosovo). Reproduced with permission from Monica Raspi, Villa Pomona, Castellina in Chianti.

The Villa Pomona wines bear the name of Monica’s great-grandfather Bandini. The estate makes a Chianti Classico annata and a Riserva. The annual production of each is very small, ten thousand bottles of annata and four thousand of Riserva. Both wines have the same blend: 95 percent Sangiovese, 5 percent Colorino. They mature in tonneaux and a mix of oval Slavonian oak barrels with capacities ranging from five to ten hectoliters (132 to 264 gallons), twelve months for the annata and twenty for the Riserva.

I tasted one annata and two Riservas. Fran and I have a preference for the annata category. Here was no exception. The nose of the 2012 annata smelled of vibrant woodsy cherry and Red Hots, a spicy cinnamon candy that I enjoyed as a child. It was very tart in the mouth, with high astringency, but the highish alcohol increased the wine’s body, offsetting these. The 2010 Riserva’s nose was woodsy and had a mature earthiness. Again, its acidity was higher than what one would expect of a Chianti Classico of that vintage, but the astringency was softer and the alcohol was dominant. The 2008 Riserva was the most purely cherry driven in the nose. It too had higher than average acidity and, unlike the 2010 Riserva, more aggressive astringency. This was my second-favorite of these wines, better for a meaty meal than a light snack.

After our appointment, we went on an adventure to visit Passeggeri, a nearby fattoria that was abandoned after World War II. It had been the home of Gino Sarrocchi, an Italian senator who was the president of the Consorzio del Gallo from 1927 to 1947. Chiantigiani told us that British prisoners of war had paved the long entry road with stones. Vegetation has since conquered Passeggeri. The vineyards are now forests. Laws forbid replanting them. Entering the buildings, torn apart by looters and damaged by the elements, is dangerous. Tourists beware! Nature is more powerful and enduring than nations or people.

RODANO

Enrico Pozzesi reveres his grandfather and his father. Because his family had roots in the area of Castellina where Rodano is located, his grandfather, a medical doctor, saved money and bought this estate in 1958. Four mezzadri families were living and working there. Instead of perpetuating the social distance between padrone and mezzadri, he befriended them, even staying overnight in their homes. Enrico’s father, Vittorio, and Enrico maintained that closeness. The last mezzadro family at Rodano left only in 1986.

Enrico started working at the estate in 1980. A year later, Giulio Gambelli began consulting there. The family is proud of their association with him. Unlike many others, Rodano consistently named him when asked to identify its technological consultant. After Gambelli’s death in 2012, Paolo Salvi, who had visited with Gambelli in his final years, took his place at Rodano. Enrico and his wife, Stefania, studied agronomy at the University of Florence. They are not just owners. Their direction and participation in the work of the farm make them vignaioli.

In 1986, Gambelli suggested that they separately bottle the Sangiovese from the Viacosta vineyard. The Pozzesis bottle Viacosta only three or four times a decade, when the quality of the wine lives up to what they think it should be.

There are thirty-four hectares (eighty-four acres) of vineyards in production. The estate is at the southwestern edge of Castellina on Via Francigena, a road that pilgrims traveling between northern Europe and Rome used during the Middle Ages. Now it is an isolated dirt road. The estate sits on clay-dominant soil at an approximate elevation of 250 meters (820 feet).

It makes two Chianti Classicos, both traditional in style. The Chianti Classico annata (90 percent Sangiovese, 5 percent Colorino, 5 percent Canaiolo) normally macerates for a full three weeks, then matures for more than two years in large Slavonian oak casks. The 2010 has cherry and balsam in the nose and an earthy, dusty, mature taste. It is ready to drink. The 2007 Chianti Classico Riserva Viacosta has a deeper color and an earthier and more balsamic nose. Its maceration and maturation in big barrel are even longer than those of the annata. The 2007 Viacosta was more astringent and had more body in the mouth. This wine too is ready to drink. The place and the people are in Rodano’s wines.

GREVE IN CHIANTI

CANDIALLE

Though we had been told where Candialle’s driveway was, we missed it anyway. It is an unmarked dirt lane, splintering off at a hairpin turn from the road from Ponte Nuovo to Sicelle. We barreled down it into the heart of Panzano’s conca d’oro. At the estate, we met Josephin Cramer and Jarkko Markus Di Peränen. They were accompanied by a large moving mound of dreadlocks. This was their dog. Josephin is German. Jarkko is Finish. They communicate to each other in English. We described our mission. Josephin made it clear how important the terroir was: “You won’t leave without seeing the vineyards.”

MAP 6

Greve in Chianti.

We climbed into their four-wheel drive and drove alongside a field of alberello vines. Josephin and Jarkko began replanting the vineyards in 2002. There were three hectares (seven acres) then, and some trees with vines running up their trunks. They noticed that much of their land had never been farmed mechanically. They wanted to keep the soil in as pristine a condition as possible and resolved to do as much of the farming by hand as they could, to avoid soil compaction. They left the stone terraces in place.

Jarkko knew a consulting agronomist from Emilia-Romagna, Remigio Bordini, who had developed a small alberello vineyard at Carnasciale, near Mercatale Valdarno just outside Chianti Classico. Under his guidance, they restructured the original three hectares and planted nine (twenty-two acres) more. Eighty percent of the vines are trained in the alberello system, and their density is between seventy-six hundred and ten thousand per hectare (3,076 and 4,047 per acre). If the density were higher, machines could not even enter the vineyards. Vittorio Fiore, formerly their consulting enologist, had mentioned to us that he had seen Josephin pruning vines with her baby napping in a carriage beside her. They do everything all by themselves except the harvest, when a team of Albanians joins them. With this extra help, it takes about eight hours.

In some areas of their vineyards, the three branches of alberello-trained vines rise in one plane, in candelabra fashion. They had fixed the vegetation to wires running along the row. In other areas, the three branches grow in the round, tied to chestnut stakes, to some pine stakes, which they are phasing out, and to rebar. Chestnut stakes are traditional in Chianti. The rebar is experimental. Josephin told us that alberello, more than other training systems, generally gives the same number of small, loose bunches every year. She and Jarkko have also left two hectares (five acres) in cordon-spur training. Where early spring frost can threaten buds, they use the capovolto system, leaving the canes unpruned and pointing up at the sky until it is safe to cut them and tie them down near the ground. They have planted mostly the T19 Sangiovese clone, which Bordini developed at the Tebano research station in Romagna. Jarkko explained that of all the Sangiovese clones, it has grapes with the darkest skin and the most acidic and sweetest pulp. The Sangiovese in Candialle’s wine Pli is all T19. Josephin and Jarkko have also planted Canaiolo, Malvasia Nera, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah. The grapes from these vines fill out the Sangiovese in the Chianti Classico La Misse di Candialle and make up their IGT wines.

In the winery, they talked to us as they leaned against bisque-colored globular ceramic Clayver maturation vats. Along with Il Borghetto, an estate in the Montefioralle area of San Casciano, they were the first to use these vats in Chianti Classico. In the background were unlined concrete tanks, tonneaux, and barriques. The winery was clean enough for surgery.

Candialle is at 300 to 360 meters (984 to 1,181 feet) above sea level on galestro-based soil. It makes no Gran Selezione or Riserva. La Misse di Candialle is its ready-to-drink Chianti Classico. La Misse is an Italianization of “little miss.” It is 90 percent Sangiovese and matures in cement tanks. The Candialle Chianti Classico is 100 percent Sangiovese. Pli is an IGT composed of 95 percent Sangiovese and 5 percent Petit Verdot.

A 2012 La Misse was deep in color, with a delicate and complex nose of ripe and dried red fruits and flowers. Alcohol dominated the modest sourness and astringency in the mouth. Jarkko told us that in 2012 the vines were stressed because it was the second hot vintage in a row. The grapes developed less tannin than in 2011. It rained two weeks before the vintage, swelling the berries and lessening their ratio of solids to juice. That weather, he said, would result in a shorter life for the 2012. The 2011 Chianti Classico was darker than typical for that vintage. The nose was dominated by cinders and woodsy smells. Average acidity and astringency balanced the piquancy of alcohol in the mouth. A 2010 Chianti Classico was paler but with a similar nose and palate to those of the 2011. It was slightly more complex than the 2011.

The 2011 Pli was very dark. It was too oaky in the nose for current drinking. Alcohol dominated in the mouth. On the other hand, the 2009 Pli, from another warm year, was one of the best Sangiovese wines that I tasted in 2015. The color was typical of Sangiovese. The nose had earthy, dusty, and boiled-cherry smells. In the mouth, it had a soft-textured astringency and less alcohol and more balance than the 2011 Pli.

As we were leaving Candialle, Josephin mentioned that pli is a French word that means “fold.” The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze used it to signify the meeting of different realities and their folding into one another to make a new reality. Josephin and Jarkko have folded into each other. Pli, the wine, is the symbol of their new reality.

FATTORIA DI LAMOLE

At six hundred meters (1,969 feet) above sea level, Paolo Socci was looking down from Fattoria di Lamole over vineyards that his family has looked down over, if not worked, for many centuries—legend has it since 1071. He pointed up at his hillside vineyard and said, “See how the terraces look like narrow knife blades?” He postulated that the Latin word lamulae, which means “tongues,” became the Italian word lame, which means “blades”: “This is how Lamole got its name.”

Socci loves history, particularly that of his village, Lamole. He has a theory to prove that it has roots in Chianti. San Donato a Lamole, the village’s historic church, was in the parish of Santa Maria Novella, a larger church in Radda. Because the suffix “in Chianti” was for centuries attached to Santa Maria Novella, Lamole, by association, has been part of Chianti. To support his point, he took us on the dirt roads that vault over the hills from Lamole to Radda to visit Santa Maria Novella. These ancient paths also suggest that Lamole’s link with Radda is indeed very old.

In modern times as well, Socci’s family has been firmly in the Chianti camp. His grandfather Carlo was one of the founding members of the Consorzio del Gallo in 1924. In the 1950s, his father, Giorgio, won a prize for increasing production through specialized farming. At the time, the survival of the Chianti wine industry depended on transitioning away from promiscuous farming, but although Lamole had the advantage that many of its vineyards were already specialized, the upkeep of their stone walls required low-cost labor that only sharecropping families could supply, and the mezzadri were leaving their poderi to move to cities and towns outside Chianti. The village of Lamole went from nine hundred to seventy inhabitants during the 1950s and 1960s, decades of change.7 Either the vineyards were abandoned and their walls left to fall apart or the terraces were bulldozed and vines planted in rows running down the hills.

This situation made all the landholding families in Chianti rethink their plans for the future. Socci credits Livio Piccini, “a self-educated man,” with helping three generations of his family to move through these changes, from his grandfather Carlo to him. Piccini, as the fattore, assisted in planning the replanting of the vineyards that phylloxera had destroyed, managed the relationship between the Socci family and their mezzadri, and organized all the daily work in the vineyards and in the cantina. So great is Socci’s gratitude to Piccini that in early 2016 he released the first two vintages, the 2012 and the 2013, of Le Viti di Livio. The first is an IGT wine. The second is a Chianti Classico Gran Selezione. The wine is made from grapes grown on vines that Piccini and Socci planted in the late 1970s. They selected the budwood from the vineyards of Lamole, grew them into barbatelle, and replanted them in the vineyard franche di piede (on their own roots). I have yet to taste this wine, but it should be Lamole-Lamole.

For most of the 1960s, Giorgio Socci made the estate’s wine and sold it to Ruffino. In 1965, Paolo spent his year of obligatory military service in Florence. When he told people that he came from Lamole, they would often remark, “Ah, Lamole—that’s where they make good Chianti.” This germinated a seed of pride in him. The last harvest that his father vinified was the 1967. He died in December 1969. After Giorgio’s death, Paolo, in consultation with his brother and mother, took over the management of the estate from Piccini. Beginning with the 1968 harvest, the estate’s entire production of grapes was conferred to the Castelli del Grevepesa cooperative, where it was vinified and blended with other wines made from the grapes of other cooperative members. Socci worked at the cooperative in the 1970s and became its general director in the 1980s. But he was also dreaming about restoring Lamole’s reputation for fine wines. In the 1970s, he planted fourteen hectares (thirty-five acres) of vines with prephylloxera germplasm, from the budwood of Lamole vines planted before 1930.

The wine industry boomed in the 1990s, and it seemed like this would last forever. In 1991, Socci planted Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay in an experimental vineyard at seven hundred meters (2,297 feet) of elevation in the township of Radda. But his love of Lamole encouraged him to confront and try to disprove its post-1970s reputation as a source of unripe grapes and thin wines. His hunch was that he could do this by restoring many of the elements of the viticultural landscape that had made the town’s wines famous in the past.

Beginning with the 2001 harvest, he withheld part of the estate’s production from the cooperative and vinified it himself under a separate brand, Le Stinche. His first vinification, of the 2002 vintage, resumed the work of his father after a thirty-five-year blackout of family wine production. In 2002, he divided the family property with his sister. She took the family palace. He took the land, more than two hundred hectares (494 acres), most of which was forest. He ended up being land rich but cash poor. He ended the estate’s relationship with the cooperative after the 2006 vintage. Commencing with the next year’s harvest, he vinified the entire production of Fattoria di Lamole.

Continuing to search for the reason why Lamole’s wine had been so great, he focused on restoring his farm’s terraces. On steep slopes, they stop rain from sweeping away finer soil, which is necessary for better growth and hence better skin development of the grapes. With European Union rural development funds, loans from banks, and his own money, in 2003 and 2004 he recovered seven kilometers (more than four miles) of terraces. The new vines that were planted were grafted on to rootstocks of Chianti Classico 2000 Sangiovese clonal selections and other selections made by the researcher Roberto Bandinelli. Ciglioni, grassy embankments that are a lower-cost solution than terraces, were used where the gradient was less. Inexpensive labor would not be returning to Lamole, so the design of the vineyards had to allow for mechanization. The vines were trained in rows of alberello candelabras, with the canes and vegetation tied to wires. This flattening of the canopy made possible the movement of small machines between the rows. Though the viticultural costs would still be higher than those of conventional systems, the wines he produced, Socci believed, would be noticeably better and would sell at higher prices. He would also have a great story to tell and something to show for it. The Universities of Florence, Milan, Padua, and Perugia took an interest too, each studying the restoration from a different perspective.

In the early 2000s, the wine business was still strong, and banks were lending money freely at favorable rates. Yet it takes at least four years for vineyards to begin producing grapes at a remunerative level, and by the end of the decade, the world economic situation and the wine business had changed dramatically. The banks in Italy wanted to pull back their loans in order to recapitalize. The bulk wine price of Chianti Classico dipped lower than the cost of production. The domestic demand for expensive Italian wine dropped dramatically.

In 2009, Fattoria di Lamole released the first bottles, 524 of them, of wine from grapes from the renovated terraces, the 2007 Grospoli Chianti Classico. More vintages and another single-vineyard wine, Lama della Villa, followed later. By 2014, the 2011 Grospoli numbered sixteen hundred bottles and the 2010 Lama della Villa, the second wine from grapes from the renovated terraces, one thousand. Fattoria di Lamole also produces Castello di Lamole Chianti Classico annata and Riserva, numbering about five thousand and twelve hundred bottles respectively. Hence, its production remains small scale, well below its potential. Economies of scale are not there. The wines have been well received by critics, but not so enthusiastically as to have buyers knocking on Socci’s door. Banks, however, have been knocking, but looking for loan repayments, not bottles of wine to buy. Literally down the road looms another adversary, the Lamole di Lamole estate, which the large and powerful Santa Margherita group owns. This company is aware that Fattoria di Lamole is floundering and has made moves to use its financial leverage to indirectly wrest some or all of Socci’s estate away from him. Socci is battling to keep Fattoria di Lamole his, or perhaps to find a well-financed silent partner. He winked as he showed us an ancient cellar he owns that, he told us, extends underneath the Lamole di Lamole facility. Juliane, his wife, offsets these dark storm clouds with the pastel shades that she uses to decorate the estate’s agriturismo.

Socci has two brands, Antico Lamole and Le Stinche. He uses Antico Lamole for Grospoli and Lama della Villa, both Gran Selezione wines. The labels are modified replicas of ones from the Soccis’ early twentieth-century production. The period colors and designs are tasteful and classic. The other brand is Le Stinche, which is used for Castello di Lamole Chianti Classico Riserva and Croce di Bracciano IGT, a Chardonnay–Sauvignon Blanc wine. Stinche is pronounced “Steenkay.” Socci used to own the site of Le Stinche castle, a fortress in Lamole that the Florentine army razed more than seven centuries ago. Its captives were held in Florence, in a prison that took on the name of the place where they had been seized. Le Stinche prison still exists. Socci’s choice to trademark Le Stinche as a brand for his estate’s wines is further proof of his attachment to history.

I tasted two vintages of the Vigna Castello di Lamole Riserva, the 2011 and 2010. The 2011 had woodsy, cindery, and earthy smells. It was ready to drink. The 2010 had vegetal, oaky, and earthy smells and was soft in the mouth, showing some maturity. I also tasted the 2010 Antico Lamole Lama della Villa. It was more alcoholic, sourer, more astringent, and in general more structured than the 2010 Riserva. Both showed the strength of the vintage. The 2009 Vigna Grospoli was very ripe and ready to drink.

Despite its not being a Chianti Classico, Socci deserves recognition for his stunning 2013 Le Stinche Croce di Bracciano, the first wine from his high-elevation vineyard. He harvested its Sauvignon Blanc fifteen days before its Chardonnay. The Sauvignon Blanc vinification got off to a head start, and then an equal volume of Chardonnay must was added to it, lengthening the fermentation to seventy days. The wine has a deep, brilliant yellow color, an unusually mushroomy, peppercorny, late-harvest dried-tropical-fruit nose, and a slightly viscous texture enhanced by bitterness and girded with acidity. This is Socci’s first white wine, and a great one!

MONTE BERNARDI

At the bottom of Panzano’s conca d’oro sits Monte Bernardi. It is at the shell of gold’s southernmost point, on a hillside about 350 meters (1,148 feet) high looking down over the Pesa River. In February 2015, we met Michael Schmelzer, the winemaker and a family owner, there.

Monte Bernardi is a member of the Unione Viticoltori di Panzano (UVP, or Union of Panzano Winegrowers), an association of Panzano organic wine producers. Many of its twenty or so members are outsiders, in that they came to Panzano from somewhere else. Schmelzer would be an ideal ambassador for the United Nations of Panzano, an insider’s nickname for the organization. Born in Germany, he has lived and studied in the United States and Australia. His first love was cuisine. He went to Paris to earn his chef’s hat at Le Cordon Bleu. Meanwhile, the Schmelzer family had established its retreat at Monte Bernardi. On one of his visits to Chianti, he met fellow world traveler Sean O’Callaghan, the winemaker at Riecine. O’Callaghan inspired Schmelzer to follow in his footsteps and become a Chianti Classico winemaker. Fortunately, he had a wine estate waiting for him. He went to Australia, earned an enology degree, and returned to join his sister, Jennifer, at Monte Bernardi. She is the commercial manager.

Schmelzer brims with unconventional, well-reasoned ideas. He introduced the practice of braiding, intrecciatura in Italian, to Chianti Classico. Twirling a vine’s topmost shoots into a braid, normally done in June, allows the plant to channel its growth force there. If it were topped instead, secondary shoots would grow lower in the canopy, restricting airflow and sunlight and thus necessitating the shoots’ removal. Schmelzer also finds that braiding enhances the phenolic development of the grape skins and advances the harvest by several days. Now other winegrowers are becoming vine stylists.

Schmelzer wants to go back to the basics of Sangiovese clonal selection. Instead of the new clonal selections that favor small bunches, thick grape skins, and early ripening, he prefers F9 and R24, 1980s-generation clones that spawn bigger bunches of large, slow-to-ripen grapes with thin skins. Schmelzer appreciates the more delicate aromas, more variable ripeness, and fruitier flavors associated with these clones. Nor does he like mass selection, which has been the vogue since the mid-1990s, since it does not allow him to track the performance of his selections.

Winegrowers are usually quick to point out how densely their vines are planted. High densities impress journalists. Schmelzer boldly presents a contrarian view. He likens a densely planted vineyard to a crowd of sweating people on a muggy day and prefers to surround each vine with space, air, and light. His vine density is close to the minimum that Chianti Classico wine law allows for new plantings, 4,400 per hectare (1,781 per acre). Schmelzer’s is about 4,717 per hectare (1,909 per acre), with 2.65 meters (8.69 feet) between rows and 0.8 meters (2.6 feet) between the vines in each row.

Since the mid-1990s, one of the highlights of most winery tours has been the selection table. These work in many ways. Perforated conveyor belts shake the grapes, move them across a vacuum head, or send them into a pool of water, all in the name of separating the “good” from the “bad.” Schmelzer has no selection table. He believes that their excessive use has led to the selection of grapes that are all at the same level of ripeness, usually very high. The result is monotonous, high-alcohol wines. He likes to harvest grapes at different levels of ripeness. Less-ripe grapes, which most winegrowers avoid, he seeks out, to increase acidity and lower alcohol levels. Furthermore, to get a diversity of flavor within each bunch, he has stopped bunch pruning, the process of removing the wings or ears of bunches so as to accelerate, concentrate, and homogenize the ripening of the grapes that are left.

In the winery, Schmelzer avoids unnecessary oxidation and microbial contamination by always keeping his containers for vinification, maturation, and storage full. For this to be possible, they all have to be multiuse. He has purchased large oval casks with big openings at the top to function as both fermentation and storage vats. He vinifies all Monte Bernardi wines similarly, to maximize the use of his equipment. However, he keeps the grapes separated by provenance. After vinification, different lots are matured for different amounts of time in different containers, to differentiate the product lines.

He pointed to an immaculately clean small basket press. “I like to press the skins and seeds hard after the fermentation, as hard as I can press without breaking the seeds,” he said. “At the end of the process, the skins are so dry that I can blow them out of my hand as if they were powder. I prefer the tannins from the grapes to the tannins from oak. The grape tannins might taste aggressive at the beginning of the wine’s maturation, but they soften up. For this reason, I use as little new oak as I can. When I buy thirty-hectoliter [793-gallon] ovals, I choose German and Austrian oak, because it has a lighter oak flavor.” Schmelzer calls on his chef training for his motto, “You have to think of the whole brodo [soup].” This is kitchen lingo for “You have to consider how everything contributes to the making of a dish.”

The Schmelzer family purchased Monte Bernardi in 2003. There are 9.5 hectares (23.5 acres) of vineyards at the estate, which also leases and farms five hectares (twelve acres) at up to five hundred meters (1,640 feet) of elevation closer to the village of Panzano. The estate produces one single-vineyard wine, Sa’etta, from a two-hectare (five-acre) vineyard. While this is its deluxe wine, Monte Bernardi also offers a fresh, light, lowish-alcohol Sangiovese called Sangió, made from grapes from the higher-elevation vineyard.

The highest yield that Schmelzer can get at Monte Bernardi is four thousand bottles per hectare (1,619 per acre), or thirty hectoliters per hectare (321 gallons per acre), which is tiny. Chianti Classico is an expensive place to farm. It costs Monte Bernardi about 3.50 euros per liter ($14.75 per gallon) just to make the wine that is put in the bottle. To help support the estate, the Schmelzers have developed a merchant line of wines called Fuori Strada, “Off road.” They purchase wine, have it bottled and labeled, and sell it to the wine trade. This line presently features a Tuscan Sangiovese and a Sicilian Grillo sold in Tetra Pak cartons.

I sampled three vintages of Monte Bernardi’s Retromarcia Chianti Classico, the 2011, 2012, and 2013. Retromarcia means “to go in reverse,” the implication being that the wine is a return to tradition. The blend is 95 percent Sangiovese, 3 percent Merlot, and 2 percent Canaiolo Nero. The fermentation takes place in concrete and stainless steel vats with a skin maceration period of up to twenty days. The wine matures in second- and third-year barriques and tonneaux. All three were pale and refreshingly berry loaded in the mouth. The 2011 and 2012 vintages had more structure and more alcohol. The 2013 would be a pleasant wine for lunch, while the 2011 and 2012 would be perfect with grilled steak.

I also sampled two vintages of the Chianti Classico Riserva, a 2010 and a 2008. The blend is 95 percent Sangiovese and 5 percent Canaiolo Nero. Some of the grapes come from the Sa’etta vineyard. The Riservas go through at least two years of maturation in oak cask. The nose of the 2010 had earthy, cherry, and balsam smells. The wine was alcoholic with moderate astringency. The 2008, from a briefer season, had a fresher cherry nose and higher acidity, lower astringency, and slightly lower alcohol than the 2010. It was balanced, perfect for drinking now.

POGGIO SCALETTE

When we visited Vittorio Fiore at Poggio Scalette in February of 2015, he told us that he was sixty harvests old. At the age of fourteen, he participated in his first harvest. He and his wife, Adriana Assjè di Marcorà, named the estate that they bought in 1991 Poggio Scalette, “hill of small stairs,” to refer to the terraces that look like steps going up the hillside.

Fiore believes in Poggio Scalette’s terroir. It is in a località, Ruffoli. In 2002, with his son Jurij, an enologist trained in Dijon, at his side, he had told me that if Ruffoli were recognized as a Chianti Classico subzone, he would use the Ruffoli designation for the estate’s jewel wine, Il Carbonaione. Its alter ego is on the back label: this is “Il vino di Vittorio Fiore,” “The wine of Vittorio Fiore.” For Fiore, Il Carbonaione is the culmination of his life in wine. He is willing to share the identity of this Vittorio wine only with its birthplace, Ruffoli, and certainly not with unspecific Chianti Classico. He still feels this way today. Ruffoli or bust! So Il Carbonaione remains an IGT, identifying itself as from Alta Valle della Greve, the upper Greve River Valley.

Fiore and Jurij took us to see the Carbonaione vineyard. Marina, the family dog, followed, occasionally darting away to chase a small deer that disappeared between the vines. Il Carbonaione was planted in 1925. It was the most important vineyard of the five hectares (twelve acres) that the Fiores purchased in 1991. Because the site was not on a steep slope, the vines were in rows eight meters (twenty-six feet) apart along the contour of the hill, to reduce erosion, with wheat planted between the rows. Vittorio was surprised to learn from local mezzadri that some of the vines were on the rootstocks 3309, a low-vigor one used in the Medoc in Bordeaux, and Rupestris du Lot, which was more widely used in that period. The mezzadri remembered the numbers 3309 all their lives because the vines on that rootstock gave so little fruit. Those grafted on to Rupestris du Lot, however, rewarded the farmers’ hard work with high yields. Vittorio and Jurij, however, are happy with lower vigor and lower yields, which give them more concentrated and riper fruit.

The main particle constituent of Il Carbonaione’s topsoil is sand, which is very difficult for vines to root in, drains water easily, and lacks fertility. Fortunately, the vineyard’s slope is not steep enough to need stone terracing to hold back the soil and help harbor water, soil nutrients, and humus. Underneath the topsoil at Ruffoli, it is a nightmare—rocks, rocks, and more rocks. And you can’t just cart them away without getting legal approval. Vittorio and Jurij explained that the cost of planting a site like Il Carbonaione is about forty thousand euros per hectare ($18,221 per acre). On flat, stoneless land, it would be about six thousand euros per hectare ($2,733 per acre). A steep slope could cost sixty thousand euros per hectare ($27,332 per acre). To install a vineyard with stone terraces would cost about five hundred thousand euros per hectare ($227,767 per acre).

The original vines in Carbonaione are more than ninety years old. Vittorio and Jurij have replaced dead vines with budwood selected from the Carbonaione vineyard. They had it grafted on to rootstocks to make barbatelle. They believe that the original vines in this vineyard are the historic Sangiovese di Lamole biotype, that this was the selection of Sangiovese first planted in the Chianti hills, and that much of the Sangiovese elsewhere in Tuscany derives from it.

At Poggio Scalette, the exposures extend from south to west. The fifteen hectares (thirty-seven acres) of vineyards are at 350 to 500 meters (1,148 to 1,640 feet) above sea level. Because the temperature drops below 8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit) during many nights of the year and mold cannot live below 10 degrees (50 degrees Fahrenheit), the vineyards are largely mold free. The prevailing wind, which comes from the north, can be brisk, but it also helps to reduce mold and protect against frost. The vineyards of Ruffoli, Casole, and Lamole have big plusses (great fruit) and big minuses (high costs and lots of work).

The estate also makes a Chianti Classico and small volumes of Merlot and Chardonnay wine, destined for Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence. Giorgio Pinchiorri is an old friend of Vittorio’s. His restaurant’s staff comes to harvest the grapes. The Chardonnay, Richiari, is the most Burgundian (and best) barrel-fermented Chardonnay that I tasted in Chianti Classico. Unfortunately, only nine hundred bottles are produced each year. You have to dine at Pinchiorri to enjoy it.

Poggio Scalette is a family affair. Jurij has taken over the day-to-day management. His brother Roberto sells the wine on the Italian market and his brother Alessandro in the export markets. Brother Claudio is the winemaker at the Castelluccio winery in the Romagnan hills. It is owned by Vittorio Fiore, two of his brothers, and other investors.

Much of Vittorio and Jurij’s efforts go into enhancing the power while preserving the elegance of Il Carbonaione. It is a wine designed to age, not to drink young. For example, I described the 2012 that I tasted in May 2015 as “unusually dark in color; charred oak, dripping with very ripe red fruit and cinders, in the nose; high acid, alcoholic, very astringent, slightly viscous, chocolate finish; high in body, concentrated, and complex.”

I also sampled a 1999. I remembered tasting it several years after the vintage. Now I was trying it after fifteen years of bottle aging. The intensity of color had lessened to slightly more than average for a Chianti Classico of that age. The nose was a bit vegetal with a celery note, earthy, and very ripe. The wine was soft, round, and tart in the mouth, with a persistent, lingering astringency. It was still powerful, but it had aged in the nose and become fuller in the mouth.

Less expensive than Il Carbonaione is the estate’s Chianti Classico. The 2012 had much the same character as, but less intensity than, the 2012 Il Carbonaione. I smelled no oak contact. In fact, the wine had aged in lined cement vats.

Vittorio is fortunate that his two neighbors, Querciabella, just below, and Il Tagliato, right above him, are both high-quality estates with unique personalities. All three have much to gain from the creation of a Ruffoli subzone. If this is achieved, Vittorio will have reached the summit of his hill of small stairs.

VILLA CALCINAIA

The Capponi family is Florentine, old, and distinguished. It bought four poderi in Greve in 1524. From this purchase grew a nucleus of buildings that was later crowned by the family’s country villa, Calcinaia, which is just north of Greve village. Today the estate comprises about thirty hectares (seventy-four acres) of vineyards just west of the Greve River. The Chianti Classico vineyards range from 220 to 350 meters (722 to 1,148 feet) in elevation and face mostly east-southeast. The soil changes as one goes up the hill, from deep, rich loam to shallower, calcareous sandy soils with galestro. Calcinaia means “chalk quarry” in Italian.

The estate has not only elevations and soils to play with but also varietal diversity. In two vineyards respectively planted in 1959 and 1975, biotypes of Mammolo, Sanforte, and Occhiorosso, three old Chianti vine varieties, have been selected and propagated for use on the farm. To tantalize our imaginations concerning what Chianti might have been, Villa Calcinaia makes small lots of each into varietal wines. This is the Le Microlinee series.

Two Capponi brothers are managing the family farm. Sebastiano directs the estate. He would prefer to stay at the farm more, overseeing the viticulture and vinification, but he has to sell Villa Calcinaia’s wines to the world. He jokingly refers to himself as the Willy Loman of the family. Niccolò, a military historian, minds the fort while his brother plays Loman.

In late October 2014, we visited the estate with the consulting enologist Fred Staderini. Fran engaged Niccolò to learn more about the history of the mezzadria system. I shadowed Staderini to learn about his role there. Outdoors we climbed up metal stairs to taste wines from tall, shiny tanks. Staderini explained that each was actually two stacked tanks. The top ones were full of fermented wines left to macerate on their skins. At the right moment, determined by its flavor, the wine in a top tank would be drained off its skins and into the empty bottom tank. Only gravity was used. The skins left behind would be almost dry.

At the top of the stairs, we met Francesco Checcucci, a young, full-time cellar master and a native of Greve. He would drain wine into a glass from a tank, then pass it around. Staderini would offer his assessment and recommendations. The grapes in the tanks had been harvested a month earlier. After tasting one sample, Staderini said, “We can’t get anything more out of the skins. You should drain either tomorrow or the next day.” Francesco nodded. Staderini pulled a red book from under his arm and wrote down his instructions while repeating them aloud. He turned to me and explained that macerating after fermentation removes bitterness from wine. You have to taste the wine to know the right time to drain it off the skins. If you wait too long, you lose the fruit. Staderini was not only a consultant but also a teacher.

We went down the stairs, stepped over hoses, passed by pumps, filtration systems, a crusher-destemmer, and tanks, and entered the winery. We went into a room where tonneaux were standing upright. Their wooden heads had been removed. They were filled with fermenting wine, but you couldn’t see it, because dry skins, the cap, covered it. Francesco pushed a glass into the cap, filled it with wine, and passed it to Staderini. While the wine in the tall metal tanks was destined to be the basic Chianti Classico, these barrels contained the estate’s first cru wine, Bastignano. The vineyard is at about 280 meters (919 feet) and has galestro-based calcareous soil. The vines, all Sangiovese, were planted in 2004 and trained in alberello, on stakes alla Lamolese, “in the Lamole style.” In this system, the branches rise up from a low trunk like the fingers of a half-open hand. The green shoots that grow from them are tied to the top of a stake, allowing the vegetation and bunches to spread out in the round. This produces grapes loaded with compounds that make dark and concentrated wine. This wine had been on its skins for about a month. Staderini recommended draining it off within five to seven days. “But taste it every day to make sure,” he counseled Francesco, then scratched some notes in the red book.

Later we went down to visit the cellar where the Bastignano would mature after its maceration. A new ten-hectoliter (264-gallon) tonneau was waiting for it. Staderini mentioned that this barrel signaled a new strategy for the estate. While Calcinaia was playing with different sizes, other clients of his had settled on one type. He commented, “There is no one way. Each foot needs its own shoe.”

Calcinaia’s Chianti Classico annatas are 90 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent Canaiolo. They mature for twenty months in large oak casks. The 2012 had very ripe red berry fruit and was both alcoholic and astringent in the mouth. The 2011 was paler but more aromatic, with smells of cherries and cinnamon. The fresher fruit in the nose helped to balance the alcohol in the mouth. The astringency was finer than that in the 2012. The 2010 was more complex in the nose than the other two vintages. It had earthy, balsam, and ripe cherry aromas, very Burgundian in style. Its acidity refreshed its alcoholic edge. This wine, the 2010 Chianti Classico annata, is a great success for the estate.

Only fifteen hundred bottles of the 2011 Bastignano cru, a Gran Selezione, were produced. Charred oak dominated the nose. The wine was thick, tart, and dense in the mouth. I tasted licorice. This wine needs to remain in bottle several years before being let out. Then it will be more tame.

Before we left the winery, Staderini led me and Francesco over to two barrels. They held Mammolo that will be bottled as part of the Le Microlinee line. Staderini ducked his head into one, took a whiff, and shook his head: “The malolactic fermentation has started. It’s good. Let’s drain it now.”

CASTELNUOVO BERARDENGA CLASSICO

CARPINETA FONTALPINO

Gioia and Filippo Cresti, sister and brother, own and manage the Carpineta Fontalpino winery in Castelnuovo Berardenga. While Gioia, an enologist, controls production, Filippo watches over sales and marketing. The label of the estate’s wines shows the hill from which Dante imagined himself witnessing the famous battle of 1260 at Montaperti in the Inferno. The Sienese, who vanquished the Florentines there, hail this as their finest hour in their rivalry with Florence. That rivalry smolders to this day. Gioia is fiercely Sienese. From the winery, she proudly pointed out the Montaperti hilltop, crowned by cypresses. Carpineta Fontalpino’s twelve hectares (thirty acres) within the Chianti Colli Senesi DOCG include a vineyard where the battle was likely fought. The estate also makes Chianti Classico, however, from fifteen hectares (thirty-seven acres) in Castelnuovo Berardenga within the Chianti Classico DOCG.

MAP 7

Castelnuovo Berardenga Classico.

The Carpineta Fontalpino Chianti Classicos are about 90 percent Sangiovese, and Cresti has planted other varieties, such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot, to use for adjusting the appearance, smell, and structure of these wines. The estate makes a Chianti Classico annata and a Riserva. Its other wines are IGT blends of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Gamay, Alicante Bouschet, and Petit Verdot.

As a consulting enologist, Cresti has a wide range of experience and knowledge to draw on. In touch with the latest developments in her field, she selected the clones of these varieties from those developed by the Guillaume and VCR (Rauscedo) nurseries. She uses single Guyot where vigor is low, to encourage yield, and cordon-spur where vigor is high, to restrain it. In the winery, mindful of Sangiovese’s delicate personality, she pairs it with tonneaux, while she matures Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in barriques.

Cresti farms the estate organically. She says that wine producers use biodynamic practices primarily to impress journalists. She will have nothing to do with biodynamics at Carpineta Fontalpino. In the winery, she eschews selected yeast, allowing the ambient ones to create the fermentation. Her actions help to refute the common belief that all consulting enologists work by Machiavelli’s precept that “the ends justify the means.”

An anecdote about Cresti shows her tenacity and love of this work. She grew up in a well-to-do Sienese family of architects and engineers. When, as a teenager, she told her mother that she wanted to get a technical degree in agronomy and enology, her mother disapproved, fearing that her daughter would become a contadina, and did not talk to Cresti for six months. Nevertheless, Cresti went for her degree. In her last school year, from 1988 to 1989, when she was studying enology, she was the only woman in her class. Afterward, she assisted Maurizio Castelli. Since 1997, she has collaborated with Carlo Ferrini. She decided to develop the Carpineta Fontalpino farm, which her family had purchased in 1980. Her brother, Filippo, excited by the venture, joined in to help. Cresti’s mother now is proud of her strong-willed, hardworking, and talented daughter.

The three vineyards that Carpineta Fontalpino owns in Chianti Classico are at San Piero (3 hectares, or 7 acres), at an elevation of about 275 meters (902 feet) and on clayey-silty-sandy ancient marine soils; Ceretto (4.5 hectares, or 11 acres), at 375 meters (1,230 feet) and with marl soils with patches of alberese; and Petroio (7 hectares, or 17 acres), at 350 meters (1,148 feet) and with soils that have marl mixed with alberese, galestro, and macigno. Exposures range from south to east. At Petroio, there are also exposures to the west. Cresti blends the fruit from these three vineyards to make both the Chianti Classico annata and the Chianti Classico Riserva.

Though the 2012 annata has the ripe fruit smells of the vintage, in the mouth it lacks the piquant taste of high alcohol. Astringency dominates the palate. The 2010 Riserva had oak in the nose, but its fruit was fresher, with a deep, raspberry-vegetal smell. In the mouth, the “heat” of the alcohol was more evident, but this wine was less astringent. As a result, factors in both the nose and the mouth left the overall impression of integration and balance.

CASTELL’IN VILLA

Coralia Pignatelli followed an unlikely path to becoming a wine producer in Chianti Classico. She and her husband, Riccardo Pignatelli, bought the Castell’in Villa estate in 1968. They lived in Rome and had two young children. He, of Neapolitan background, was a diplomat serving in the Italian foreign service. She, of Greek background, grew up in Switzerland. As a child, she had loved to garden.

Castell’in Villa, several hours’ drive from Rome, became the family’s summer weekend retreat. It was a hamlet dating back to the 1200s, when it had been a Sienese outpost facing down Florence. But when the Pignatelli family first arrived, the hamlet was in a state of ruin. They quickly began to renovate the buildings and expand the one-hectare (2.5-acre) vineyard. FEOGA funding paid for much of their planting expenses. Soon they were selling grapes to the Chianti Geografico cooperative. Antonio Pacini, the Geografico enologist, gave Pignatelli informal winemaking lessons, and her first wine was a 1971 Chianti Classico Riserva. In the mid-1970s she had an early success, winning a prize for her “1972 Silver Gallo Nero,” as she describes it, which she entered in a competition in Piedmont. Before DOCG regulation changes in 1984, there was a quality category called vecchio (old), for Chianti Classico consortium members. Vecchio wines wore a neck seal with a black rooster framed by a ring of silver. The higher level then, Riserva, required three years of aging and had a gold outer rim on its seal.

She met Giacomo Tachis in 1977. He was impressed with her tasting ability and invited her to be at his side at wine tastings. He also gave her advice, including a copy of the winemaking text Connaissance et travail du vin by his esteemed mentor Émile Peynaud. Though she sold most of her estate’s wine in bulk to either Antinori or Ruffino, she bottled more and more of her production, beginning to export wine to the United States in the late 1970s.

But her life was thrown into crisis when Riccardo died in March 1985. Her dream of making Castell’in Villa their retirement home vanished. In grief, she wanted to leave the country, but she stayed. Her children had settled in Italy. She sold her house in Rome, letting relationships there wither on the vine. Finding solace in her love of gardening, she dedicated herself to using that talent to improve the wines of Castell’in Villa. The following winter, a sustained frost killed most of her olive trees. She almost gave up. Instead, she focused on one project after another, establishing a restaurant, an agriturismo, and a bed and breakfast. While most of the landed gentry hired managers, she personally oversaw the work in her vineyards and in the winery, often doing it herself. She is resolute in making wine from the best fruit possible without the frills of high technology or the cosmetic use of barriques. She employs Fred Staderini to help her during the blending process and to offer technical advice. She trusts him because, like her, “he loves to go into the vineyards.” She adds with a wink, “He has depth.” She seems to have financial resources that release her from the day-to-day anxieties of living off the income of Castell’in Villa. She opens her restaurant occasionally and has been known not to harvest entire vineyards of fruit because they did not meet her standards. She is Chianti Classico’s prima vignaiola.

Most of Castell’in Villa’s fifty-four hectares (133 acres) of vineyards have south-facing exposures at altitudes ranging from 250 to 300 meters (820 to 984 feet), though Poggio delle Rose, from whose grapes she makes a single-vineyard wine with that name, rises to 350 meters (1,148 feet). The soil is mainly alluvial, with pebbles and sand peppered with beds of marine fossils. Poggio delle Rose also contains some alberese stone.

Soon after Tachis met Pignatelli, he recommended that she remove the white grapes from her red wines so that they would age better. She did so. He also advised her to bud over (change the vines on the rootstocks) from Canaiolo to Cabernet Sauvignon. She produces a Super Tuscan, Santacroce, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese. Yet she says that Cabernet Sauvignon grown in Chianti does not transmit place, nor do the Super Tuscans, which she describes as “horrible monsters.”

Vinification and maturation are straightforward. The annata stays in large casks for about twelve months, while the Riserva remains longer, for two to three years. The Poggio delle Rose matures for two to three years as well, but it spends some of that time in smaller and newer oak barrels.

The 2010 Chianti Classico annata stood out as my favorite Chianti Classico during our research period. It has fruit not obscured by oak. The soft texture in the mouth balances an edge of tannin. The real test: poured into my glass, it miraculously disappears. The 2009 Riserva has more structure in the way of astringency. The 2008 Riserva has a diesel-raspberry nose and more moderate and coarser-textured astringency. It may need more bottle age.

FATTORIA DI PETROIO

Pamela Mangini Lenzi, born in Seattle to an Italian-American family, has been living her dream. In 1965, she went to Florence to deepen her expertise in Italian studies and to better understand her Italian heritage. She met Gian Luigi Lenzi, a member of an old Sienese family, in 1980. They fell in love and got married. While Gian Luigi pursued a career in medicine in Rome and eventually became a professor of neurology, Pamela focused on reviving the Lenzi family estate, Fattoria di Petroio, in Quercegrossa.

She had to manage the transition from selling their grapes to bottling and merchandising their own wine. For help, she turned to Carlo Ferrini, the technical director of the Chianti Classico consortium. Because of his expertise in the Chianti Classico territory, viticulture, and vinification, he was the bridge that the couple needed to develop Petroio into a wine estate. When Ferrini left the consortium in the early 1990s, he stayed on at Petroio as a consultant.

Pamela Lenzi smiles when she talks about Ferrini. He has a big reputation and wants to work in a way that he knows will satisfy the market, but she has stubbornly resisted, pushing back against planting international varieties and buying more barriques. Of the estate’s fifteen hectares (thirty-seven acres) of vines, twelve (thirty acres) are planted with Sangiovese. The balance has Malvasia Nera, Colorino, and smaller plantings of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Canaiolo. Lenzi identifies Sangiovese, Malvasia Nera, and Colorino as the key varieties going forward. Petroio has a “back to the future” project of mass-selecting budwood from the estate’s oldest vines for replanting, thereby preserving its vineyard past for the future.

The technical sheets for Petroio’s Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva show this direction. Prior to the 2011 Chianti Classico and the 2010 Chianti Classico Riserva releases, Merlot and/or Cabernet Sauvignon were in the blends. As of these two vintages, they are not. The move from barriques to tonneaux and larger barrels has been accomplished, and Petroio has stopped using selected yeast.

Diana, the next generation of Petroio, has officially taken over ownership of the estate. A chef by training, she creates in the kitchen. As strong willed as her mother, she straddles managing the winery and following a culinary career. She discovered an interesting bridge between the two when she used the yeast strains from the Sangiovese vinification to make bread. Since wine production is cooking in slow, slow motion, she has much to give to Petroio beyond connecting to the next generation of wine consumers and fellow Tuscan wine producers. More than anything, Chianti Classico needs young vignaiole (the plural of vignaiola).

Petroio’s 2011 and 2010 Chianti Classico annatas reflect their vintages. The 2011 has a riper nose and is more alcoholic to the taste, while the 2010 is more complex. The 2010 Riserva has achieved the balance of fruit and oak that the Lenzis have desired, while the 2008 Riserva is darker and the oak in its nose steps in front of the fruit. The 2008 Riserva also has an earthy smell and a soft texture. Petroio also makes a 100 percent Sangiovese IGT Toscana wine, Poggio al Mandorlo. It matures in stainless steel tanks. The 2012 was single-mindedly cherry loaded in the nose. Sourness balanced the piquancy of alcohol. It was a drink-me-up, fresh Sangiovese.

FÈLSINA

To reach Fèlsina, we drove from Siena in the west toward Arezzo in the east on highway SS73. To our left, toward the north, the land rose up into the Chianti hills. The fields there were planted to golden winter wheat. Calanchi (the plural of calanche), embankments of bare, pastel-tinted blue-gray clay caused by landslides, pockmarked the gentle landscape. These formations characterize the Crete Senesi, the area of rolling hills to the east and south of Siena. The hills are deep clay, the deposits of an ancient Pliocene sea that covered the area 2.5 to 5 million years ago. Clusters of trees huddle in valleys, while cypresses and oaks maintain lonely vigils on hilltops. Their roots are not enough to grab and hold the soil. Clay absorbs rain like a sponge, so with nothing to secure them, these hillsides collapse, leaving open wounds of bare gray. For any first-time visitor, the calanchi are unexpected sights, perhaps even haunting.

As we drove to Fèlsina, we noted how Lorenzetti’s Buon governo portrays this very landscape. Today, expansive fields have replaced the plots of both mixed and specialized agriculture that are visible in the fresco. There are no calanchi in the Buon governo, evidence that today’s monocultural farming strategies, though efficient, wreak havoc on the environment. Still, we imagined that we were driving into the Chianti Senese hills as depicted in the fresco.

In 1366, a few decades after Lorenzetti painted his masterpiece, the Sienese Republic established a surveillance post that became known as Castelnuovo Berardenga. The modern wine estate of Fèlsina is just north of this village. Its birth was similar to those of many other modern wine estates in Chianti Classico. Domenico Poggiali, an entrepreneur in the lumber and shipping industries in Emilia-Romagna, purchased the estate in 1966. The sudden exodus of the mezzadria families had left the land in disorder. When Poggiali found a wine cellar built into sandy rock on the estate’s grounds, it may have stirred his Romagnan roots. Romagna’s wine industry parallels that of Tuscany but lacks its fame. The cellar had been built to make wine with grapes from the surrounding vineyards. During the 1970s, Poggiali and his son, Giuseppe, expanded the original ten-hectare (twenty-five-acre) estate to forty hectares (ninety-nine acres). But the catalyst that brought it to the attention of the world was Poggiali’s son-in-law, Giuseppe Mazzocolin. This classics scholar and schoolteacher began devoting his life to the estate in the late 1970s. When Chianti Classico farms were starting to bottle wine and dip their toes into commercial waters, he found a dedicated and loyal collaborator in a young consulting enologist, Franco Bernabei, who has remained connected to the estate ever since. The two men decided to focus on Sangiovese, not the obvious decision at a time when low-quality Chianti was discrediting the image of that grape. Within a few years, in 1983, the estate issued two important wines. One, Fontalloro, attracted a great deal of attention. It took part in the Super Tuscan revolution. Though it was made with 100 percent Sangiovese, it matured in new barriques. The grapes came from two very different terroirs: the rocky, calcareous soils to the north of the estate, inside the border of Chianti Classico, and the more fertile loam soils south of Chianti Classico. The second wine, Rancia, was in its shadow until the 2000s. It was and remains a single-vineyard wine from a vineyard just inside the border of Chianti Classico.

In 1990, when he was eighteen years old, Giovanni Poggiali, the grandson of Domenico, began to work at Fèlsina. During the 1990s and 2000s, he learned the business from his uncle Giuseppe Mazzocolin. In the past few years, Mazzocolin has stepped back to play a supporting role. Poggiali now leads Fèlsina.

Back in 2002, Mazzocolin brought me to visit Rancia. We drove through dark, dense woods and broke out into a clearing where the sunlight made me wince as it ricocheted off white stones. Vines struggled there in the alberese- and sandstone-filled reddish calcareous marl soil. The wine from that vineyard, Colonia, was not bottled separately until the 2006 vintage. Eventually, it became Fèlsina’s Gran Selezione in 2014 with the 2009 vintage. The vineyard selection is draconian. Only three thousand bottles are produced for any year. We drove on farther, down to a large and empty building, a former Benedictine monastery. On the other side was a vineyard running down a southwest-facing slope. This was Rancia. Mazzocolin loved the isolation of the spot. It was on the perimeter of Chianti Classico, but he knew that it would make wine that would be anything but peripheral.

There are three main differences between Fontalloro and Rancia. Fontalloro is a mix of elevations, some at least as high as Rancia and others as low as 330 meters (1,083 feet) above sea level. Rancia is between 400 and 420 meters (1,312 and 1,378 feet). Even more significant is the soil difference. The sandy-silty-pebbly sedimentary soils of the lower sites of Fontalloro do not resemble those of the vineyards of Rancia at all, which are calcareous clay with alberese and some galestro. The third difference is the maturation of the wines. Fontalloro usually stays in barriques, for about twenty months, several more than Rancia.

I tasted the 2010 and 2008 vintages of both the Fontalloro and the Rancia. The Fontalloro is an IGT and the Rancia a Chianti Classico Riserva. The 2010 Fontalloro was younger and more oaky in the nose than the 2008. The 2008 had a cindery nose, which showed the evolution of the oak, and was soft in the mouth, which showed the evolution of the tannins. I preferred this more evolved wine. The 2010 Rancia had a nose with cinders, mint, graphite, and ripe fruit. It was soft in the mouth, a sign of some maturity. The 2008’s nose had earth, mint, and black cherry. In the mouth, the wine was angular, without enough body to balance its acidity. All four wines were stylish and well made. My preference is usually for wines with less oak overlay. For this reason, I liked the two Rancia wines more.

I also sampled a 2010 Chianti Classico Riserva. Though it is less expensive, I preferred it to the Fontalloro and Rancia wines. The nose had a malty, cacao smell. There was burned oak too. The astringency was high, but the wine was soft textured. It also had a long finish. I caught this wine at its perfect moment. I also tasted the 2013, 2012, and 2011 Fèlsina Berardenga Chianti Classicos. Of these three vintages, I preferred the 2011. The nose was very ripe, woodsy, and cindery. The wine’s astringency was low, and without that sensation to compete with, the acidity was refreshing in the mouth. The 2012 was too ripe in the nose for me. It smelled of strawberries that are so ripe that they turn into juice when you touch them. The 2013 was too young. Despite the fact that much of the maturation occurred in large barrels, oak dominated the wine. Perhaps if it had had more fruit, this sensation would have been less strong.

Poggiali is Castelnuovo’s only proprietor on the board of councillors of the Chianti Classico consortium. He has also been a unifying force behind the Classico della Berardenga association. In early 2015, about thirty producers of wine and other products in the township of Castelnuovo Berardenga met together under this banner to develop a shared identity of place that they could share with the world.

VILLA DI GEGGIANO

A corpulent farm manager, a fattore, dressed in a blue waistcoat was leaning against a barrel. He was derisively pointing at a black tub. One mezzadro, his head down, avoided the fattore’s stare, but another met it with one that combined fear, humiliation, and hatred. The artist of this fresco was Ignazio Moder, an itinerant Tyrolean. We were in Villa di Geggiano, a baroque palace six kilometers (four miles) northeast of the city of Siena. At the end of the eighteenth century, Moder had painted one of its corridors with scenes of activities characteristic of each of the twelve months of the year. There were many other figures in this fresco: a young man climbing a tree to harvest grapes, another using a club to punch down grapes in a wooden bucket, and the most famous of all, a young man holding a red rose. However, none of these more pleasant images could erase the rancor of centuries expressed in the glares of the fattore and the mezzadro.

We were with Alessandro Boscu Bianchi Bandinelli, one of the two owners of the villa, now an estate in Castelnuovo Berardenga that makes Chianti Classico. The other owner, his brother, Andrea, was in London opening a restaurant also named Villa di Geggiano. They have restored the baroque palace. This was no easy feat and came at great cost. Since the villa is a national monument, it is open only for guided tours. The Bianchi Bandinellis rent out adjacent buildings as luxury accommodations, and the villa’s grounds and outdoor theater for special parties. In 1990, an American investor bought shares, enabling the brothers to renovate the vineyards and winery, which complement the estate’s multifaceted operations. Today, with eleven hectares (twenty-seven acres) of vineyards on a property of twenty hectares (forty-nine acres), the estate makes a pure style of Chianti Classico that represents it at the villa’s functions in Siena and at the Villa di Geggiano restaurant in London.

The fresco depicting the rancor shared by the fattore and the mezzadro must have moved the brothers’ grandfather Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, a famous archaeologist and art historian. At the end of the 1950s, he effectively gave away two hundred hectares (494 acres) and twenty poderi to the estate’s resident mezzadri families. The mezzadria system had not yet begun its rapid devolution. He wanted to give them a better life. He also gave them the villa’s vat house, encouraging them to use it in cooperation with one another. The former mezzadri officially founded a cooperative cellar in 1961. In 2009, this cooperative united with another to form the Cantina Sociale Colline del Chianti e di Geggiano Pontignano Chianti Classico. For these deeds, Bianchi Bandinelli earned not only the admiration of the estate’s former mezzadri but also the hatred of Tuscany’s noble class, who branded him a traitor and called him “the Red Count.” He was, in fact, a member of Italy’s Communist Party.

Instead of focusing on the loss of much of their family property, Andrea and Alessandro have given Villa di Geggiano new life. Their revival of its wine production and their venture in London recall its early shipment of wine to England, in 1729. Florence has dominated not only the Chianti wine trade but also the territory of Chianti. The Bianchi Bandinelli family is among a dozen or so that keep Chianti Senese alive. Among their ancestors, the brothers have a twelfth-century pope, Alexander III, and a governor of Siena, Giulio Bianchi Bandinelli, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They have chosen Paolo Vagaggini as their enological consultant. He balances what his nose and palate sense with analytic results from his state-of-the-art laboratory in Siena. His sensitive touch never marks his clients’ wines with his identity. Like the Bianchi Bandinellis, he is Senese-Senese.

The vineyards flank the estate and have exposures to the west-southwest and the east-southeast. They are ensconced in the soft-edged hills of Chianti Senese at three to four hundred meters (984 to 1,312 feet) of elevation. The estate is on the ridge that extends from Pianella northwest to Vagliagli. Being at the southeastern end of the ridge, it has a little sandstone and much more alberese. These are mixed with alluvium composed of sand and silt.

Villa di Geggiano’s Chianti Classico wines are more than 95 percent Sangiovese, with the balance being Cabernet Sauvignon. The annata matures for eighteen months in tonneaux. The Riserva is made only in the best vintages. Whereas the harvested grapes for the annata pass through quickly, those for the Riserva are left in the crusher-destemmer for three days, covered with carbon dioxide gas generated by sublimating dry ice. This method of maceration, called cold maceration, increases short-term color and extracts soft tannins, which enhance texture. For the Riserva, there are two stages of maturation in barrel. In the first, 90 percent of the Riserva matures in tonneaux and the rest in barriques for twenty months. In the second stage, the two lots are married in twelve- to twenty-hectoliter (317- to 528-gallon) casks for ten months.

A 2009 Chianti Classico had red fruits and a slight tarry note in the nose. In the mouth, the wine was very tart and had above average astringency. A 2006 Chianti Classico Riserva had a deep reddish color and a red rim. It looked younger than its age. In the nose, there was a whiff of diesel fuel, which indicated that the wine needed aeration. It was astringent and bitter in the mouth. Tannins from 2006 tend to be rough. This wine needs several more years of bottle age. A 1997 Chianti Classico showed its age with a dominant celery smell in the nose, lightly tinged with cigarette smoke, the residue of some oak contact. In the mouth, the wine was fresh and invigorating, thanks to its vibrant acidity and moderate astringency.

SAN DONATO CLASSICO

CASTELLO DI MONSANTO

Fabrizio Bianchi has been a steadfast pioneer of Chianti Classico. He has transferred the management of Castello di Monsanto to his daughter Laura. She smiled behind him as he recounted his story there. In 1961, his father bought the estate. The location was great, a little hilltop of galestro at 310 meters (1,017 feet) of elevation looking west to the towers of San Gimignano. Bianchi had the right blend of genes to make Tuscan wine, one-quarter Piedmontese, three-quarters Tuscan. When he arrived, the situation was challenging. The vines, mostly of red varieties, some of white, were trained up trees, and a rudimentary winery and cantina awaited him, complete with chestnut vats and barrels. Making Chianti was his initiation to the place. He put the name of the vineyard, Il Poggio, on Monsanto labels. This was very unusual. Though mezzadri named the vineyards they worked in, the merchants who bottled wine never did. The 1962, his first wine, was good enough for him to try again. When I last tasted it forty years later, in 2002, it was very pale and somewhat leathery in the mouth, with a sweet caramel nuance from old age. It was fading but alive. In 1964, his father bequeathed Fattoria di Monsanto to him and his wife, Giuliana, as a wedding present.

MAP 8

San Donato Classico.

Over the years, Bianchi improved the vineyards, the winery, the cellar, and, as a result, the wine. In 1968 he removed the white grapes, an act that the law did not then allow. He could make better red wine that way. He abandoned the governo. He destemmed the grapes to improve the wine’s color, increase its alcohol, and decrease its bitter flavors. He bought stainless steel vats. By showering them with water, he could exert some control over the temperature of the fermentation. With an eye to providing himself with even finer raw material, in 1968 he also planted a vineyard called Scanni. It was 100 percent Sangiovese, trained on wires in rows.

The label of the first vintage of the Scanni vineyard wine read, “1974 Sangiovese Grosso, Chianti V.Q.P.R.D.” A wine labeled Chianti could not, by law, be a varietal. V.Q.P.R.D. was European Economic Community–level labeling that I have never seen on a bottle of Italian wine. The message was tongue-in-cheek. Bianchi was declaring that wine should be a reflection of its origin and fruit. The next year, to avoid prison, he labeled it as a vino da tavola.

As if he were an engineer slowly improving an airplane, step by step he made changes. In 1971, he began moving away from chestnut barrels. He added oak thirty-five- and fifty-hectoliter (924- and 1,321-gallon) casks. In 1977, he used twenty-kilogram (forty-four-pound) baskets instead of large hoppers to collect harvested bunches. He swapped pumps that chewed the wine to ones that gently pushed it. By 1974, he had reduced barrel maturation for the Riserva Il Poggio from forty-eight to forty-two months. In 1990, he began to use barriques as well as large barrels. In 1996, he installed truncated-cone-shaped vats to enhance extraction during maceration. Also in the 1990s, he reduced maturation to two years in barriques and large oak casks. Now it is about eighteen months in new and used tonneaux.

In 2000, Laura took over the winemaking with the full-time assistance of the enologist Andrea Giovannini. She will continue to make the pure, honest style of wine that her father has made, improving it whenever she can.

Monsanto’s Chianti Classico annata is as classic as it comes, 90 percent Sangiovese and 10 percent Canaiolo and Colorino matured in large oak barrels for one year. A 2012 had cherry and cinnamon in the nose and was dominated by alcohol on the palate. The 2011 had a wood-spice, clove, mint, and cherry nose and above-average sourness, astringency, and alcoholic richness in the mouth. It was reminiscent of French red Burgundy.

Monsanto’s Scanni vineyard bottling is alive and well as the Fabrizio Bianchi Sangiovese IGT Toscana. The 2010 vintage was moderate to deep in color. A vibrant nose of red fruits and cinders could be translated as “Sangiovese” and “toasted oak.” The wine was big in all dimensions: body, texture, complexity, and concentration. It needs time.

I tried the 2004 and 1970 vintages of the Il Poggio Chianti Classico Riserva. The 2004 had a floral and woodsy nose and, though round in the mouth, left a trail of fine astringency. It was fully mature, with not a hint of oxidation. The 1970 was very pale amber brown with an orange rim. In the nose, alongside the cherry, there was some celery, a sign of oxidation. A balsam note was evolved toasted oak. The wine was delicate and sour in the mouth. It was ready to drink.

CINCIANO

To get to Cinciano, take a right turn immediately after entering a rotary that comes off the Raccordo Firenze-Siena highway (RA3) at the Poggibonsi Nord exit. Then immediately take another right, on to a small road that trails through an industrial park. Instead of taking the next right, on to a road that leads under the highway toward Castello di Monsanto in Barberino, you must continue driving straight to the north-northeast on the thin slice of land between the highway to the east and Cinciano Creek to the west. The creek moves silently, hidden in a tree-lined, shallow gully. Here it defines the western border of the Chianti Classico zone. As you drive farther up the road, it gets narrower, cutting an alley through clutches of buildings and finally becoming a dirt road. On the left, the valley of the Elsa River opens up. The towers of San Gimignano are perched on a hill in the distance. But you need to keep your eyes on the road and drive slowly. Though the scenery is idyllic, the turns are sharp and dangerous.

At the most dangerous corner of all, one drives on a ledge leaning over olives trees and vineyards, and then Cinciano comes into view, a large villa surrounded by a complex of buildings. This is a marvelous place not only to stay in the agriturismo units but also to dine at the boutique restaurant, Osteria 1126. The number alludes to the first year that habitation was noted here. In Roman times, the gens (Latin for “clan”) Cincia may have lived on the hill, also called Cincia. A visit to Cinciano is an adventure back in time.

If you want to learn about wine, email ahead to reserve a tour with the agricultural manager and trained enologist Valerio Marconi. He is one of the few born in Poggibonsi to have landed a full-time job managing the agricultural production of an elite wine estate—in his case, by virtue of his enological degree and work in La Morra in the Barolo wine region and overseas in Chile and New Zealand. Graduates of enology schools are lucky to get jobs as assistants to older enologists. Marconi is even more fortunate, making his own decisions at Cinciano: “I am grateful that I have the possibility of making something from the land in which I was born. We must give value to our land and our work.”

He will take you around the 150 hectares (317 acres) of the estate, including thirty (seventy-four acres) of vineyards and forty (ninety-nine acres) of olive trees. The estate makes not only Chianti Classico, in a winery constructed in its twelfth-century villa and the surrounding buildings, but also olive oil, with its own frantoio (olive press). Marconi’s grandfather harvested olives here in the 1980s. The tour of the vineyards will include a range of exposures, most facing west to San Gimignano and northwest toward the village of Barberino. The hill reaches an elevation of 350 meters (1,148 feet).

This is one of the warmest areas of Chianti Classico. It gets late-afternoon sun and is exposed to the warm southwesterly winds from the Tyrrhenian Sea. These are the ones most likely to bring rain to Cinciano. The land skirts the western edge of the Chianti Classico appellation, where the soils, deposited during the Pliocene epoch, are fertile clay, silt, and sand. In some pockets of sand there are fossil mollusks. The vines on these fossil beds produce some of Cinciano’s fruitiest wine. When Marconi is out in the vineyard, he stuffs fossils in his pockets. They are everywhere in his house. At the southern end of the estate, near San Giorgio, he showed us a flat vineyard with northerly and northeasterly exposures at the base of a valley and said, “Here the wines have a lot of aromas. When the vines are close to the forest, they pick up its fresh smells.” He then took us to an old vineyard of three hectares (seven acres) planted in 1971 in an area devoted to Sangiovese. The soil is calcareous clay with some alberese stone, giving the wine more structure. These grapes go into the Cinciano Chianti Classico Riserva. Marconi then brought us to a vineyard planted on galestro-based soil: “This soil is drier and has minerals such as calcium carbonate and iron. It makes fantastic wine. We will replant it and use the grapes for our Riserva wine.” We did not get to visit a vineyard at the summit of the hill, Macerita, which is crossed by an old road lined with cypresses. This used to be the main road from the villa at Cinciano to Florence, but no one uses it anymore. The vines were flowering. Marconi gave us a biology lesson too. Peeling apart a vine flower with his fingers, he showed us how the stamens pollinate the pistil and give birth to grapes.

Our tour continued to the winery, outfitted with renovated concrete vats. Next we walked through an older cellar. A lineup of thirty-five- and fifty-hectoliter (924- and 1,321-gallon) barrels of Slavonian oak was where the Chianti Classico annata matures. The Riserva matures in 225-liter (59-gallon) barriques for fourteen to sixteen months. Marconi then took us to an even older cellar in the villa, where Pietra Forte, an IGT blend of Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, the owners’ favorite wine, matures in barriques. The owners, Ottavia and Ferdinando Garrè, are from Genoa.

Cinciano wines are all about fruit. This was readily apparent in the 2012 Cinciano Rosso, a 100 percent Sangiovese IGT wine. It started with rich, deep cherry and finished with refreshing acidity and an edge of bitterness. Marconi fermented it at a low temperature, 25 to 27 degrees Celsius (77 to 81 degrees Fahrenheit), to maximize the fruit. The grapes mostly came from the bottom of the valley where the soil was moist and the vines were close to the forest, but there were also some from Macerita.

The 2011 Chianti Classico had darker fruit smells and was more astringent than bitter. The 2010 Riserva had tints of red and orange at the rim. Its nose mixed wood spice, red fruits, and just a hint of animal, which offset the clean fruit smells and the oaky notes. I finished all the Riserva in my glass, the best test, and unusual for me during a technical tasting.

We also tasted the 2009 Pietra Forte. There was a faint whiff of its 20 percent Merlot and Cabernet. This wine was more astringent than the Riserva. Marconi told us that originally it was only 70 percent Sangiovese. “Now, at 80 percent, you feel Sangiovese in the mouth. The structure comes from the Sangiovese,” he declared. He was evidently pleased that here too Sangiovese had come to rule.

As Marconi locked the door of the cellar behind us, he jangled a massive ring of keys. He is responsible for everything produced at Cinciano. He walks the different parts of the vineyard every day to note every changing detail. Each day during the vinifications, he tastes the wines and decides what to do next. He is so attached to the wines that he calls them “his.” Like the vines, he grew up in this area. His mother’s parents were mezzadri. Chianti needs more true Chianti vignerons like Valerio Marconi.

ISOLE E OLENA

In 1956, the De Marchi family from Piedmont purchased two hamlets in Barberino, Isole and Olena, which they incorporated into one, calling it Isole e Olena. Paolo De Marchi and his wife, Marta, now own the estate.

Paolo visited there for the first time in 1958. He was seven years old. It took a full day for the De Marchi family to drive from Lessona to Isole e Olena. Highway A1 was not yet built. Paolo’s first view of the hamlets was an incredible sight. One hundred and twenty people, most of them mezzadri, were living there.

The situation in Paolo’s home of Lessona was very different. The dissolution of the mezzadria system was more gradual in Piedmont than in Tuscany, taking one hundred years, not twenty. When phylloxera hit Lessona in the late nineteenth century, mezzadri and independent farmers left the countryside to work in the textile mills of Biella. The vineyards there were never replanted, and the area continued to industrialize, drawing sharecroppers not only from Piedmont but also eventually from throughout Italy.

It was difficult for the De Marchi family to improve Isole e Olena. Effort, money, and dreams seemed to disappear into “that bottomless pit” (quel pozzo senza fondo), the epithet of Paolo’s father for their Chianti investment. Paolo remembers his mother turning to his father and asking, “Why did you get us into these troubles?” Paolo now sees the difficulties from another point of view: “Looking back, the pains were really joys.”

Change came soon, and quickly. The mezzadri left in the mass exodus that enveloped all of Chianti. De Marchi sees this as a sudden release of centuries of energy. His family restructured the farm during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They took advantage of FEOGA funds to transform promiscuous agriculture into specialized agriculture.

When De Marchi came back to manage the farm in 1976, he had just finished his studies in agricultural sciences and enology in Turin. He had traveled widely, visiting the enology schools of Geisenheim in Germany, Montpellier and Beaune in France, and the University of California, Davis. The renovation of the vineyards alone did not enable him to make high-quality wine. More investment was necessary, but interest rates for loans were as high as 27 percent. By the early 1980s, the farm was carrying enough debt to allow him to tread water but not to swim.

He turned disaster to advantage. In 1985, a hard frost destroyed olive trees throughout Tuscany. National emergency funds offered him a choice of either a cash subsidy to replant olive trees or loans with 0 to 1.5 percent interest. He chose to consolidate and refinance his high-interest loans. He paid them off within five years and planted vines, not olive trees. These new vineyards incorporated better viticultural technology and were on a larger surface, allowing him to achieve better economies of scale. The market for quality Tuscan wine had just begun to improve. He began to swim.

When De Marchi stepped out of the car in 1958, he set foot on a Tuscany controlled by old noble families. The De Marchis were outsiders. He asked his father, “Are we noble?” His father answered, “Why would that be important to you?” His father taught him not to care about this. While owning a Chianti Classico estate is an expensive hobby for other outsiders, De Marchi has had the drive, the knowledge, and the entrepreneurial skill not only to make a living from his family farm but also to gain recognition for its innovation and commitment to quality.

His estate has been a meeting ground for professionals. On any given day there, you might meet the French nurseryman Pierre-Marie Guillaume or the consulting enologists Danny Schuster from New Zealand or Andrea Paoletti from Tuscany. On the other hand, to make vin santo, De Marchi sought the help of local mezzadri. When he sees something wrong, he speaks out. He is Chianti Classico’s honest fighter.

The estate’s forty-nine hectares (121 acres) are between 350 and 450 meters (1,148 and 1,476 feet) of altitude. They are planted on calcareous clay with galestro and alberese. There is sandstone in the vicinity of Olena. Exposures vary greatly, as the vineyards are spread over the extensive property. The 2012 Chianti Classico annata is a blend of 80 percent Sangiovese, 15 percent Canaiolo, and 5 percent Syrah. It matured mostly in large casks and small barrels, of which 5 percent tended to be first use. The wine is pale, with spicy, cedary, cherry, and nutty aromatic nuances. The smell is reminiscent of Pinot Noir. Alcohol dominates the palate. The astringency is slight. Moderate in weight, it is a wine to drink young.

Cepparello, named after a creek, is a selection of De Marchi’s best lots of Sangiovese. It is an IGT Toscana. One-third of this wine matures in new small barrels, one-third in one-use barrels, and the last third in two-use barrels. The 2011 Cepparello was darker than average for 100 percent Sangiovese wine. Oak and fresh fruit dominated the nose at first. After the wine was aerated, the fruit smelled extremely ripe. The alcohol was high, but so was the acidity, which balanced it. The astringency was higher than average, adding to the structure given by the acidity. I also sampled a 1995 Cepparello. That year was known for its cool growing season, which set back maturation, and warm Indian summer, which helped bring the grapes to ripeness. The wine’s color was still strong. At the uncorking, its nose smelled young, with dark fruits and a note of struck match. In the mouth, sourness dominated. The wine had the fine-textured astringency that I love in the best examples of this vintage.

POGGIO AL SOLE

When the Swiss brothers and winegrowers Johannes and Andrea Davaz saw Poggio al Sole in 1990, they instantly felt a connection to the place and bought it within five hours. Johannes, who goes by his Italian name, Giovanni, while in Italy, lives and works at the farm with his wife, Kathrin. He would never advise anyone to buy a farm, particularly in Italy, so rashly. It was tougher work than they ever could have imagined transforming theirs into a self-sustaining operation. He would like to form a group of producers who make a living from their production. For him, it is a point of pride that Poggio al Sole is a business that provides his family with an income rather than a tax write-off. He mentioned like-minded estates, among them Corzano e Paterno, San Giusto a Rentennano, Poggerino, Rignana, Le Cinciole, Isole e Olena, Fontodi, and Poggio Scalette.

Poggio al Sole, “Hill in the sunlight,” is one of fewer than a dozen estates in the Chianti Classico part of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa. At 320 to 480 meters (1,050 to 1,575 feet) above sea level, it looks down at the ancient monastery of Badia a Passignano just to the north. The vineyards have southern, southeastern, and southwestern exposures.

As a vignaiolo, Davaz believes in the identity of the land. He favors mentioning comune and sub-comune names on labels. However, setting up subzones involves difficult decisions. He is on a ridge that extends all the way to Panzano. Poggio al Sole has many pockets of galestro and some pietraforte, just like Panzano. Davaz pointed down to a knoll that identifies the Rignana wine estate. It is about one kilometer (0.6 miles) away. It is in Panzano and is a member of the UVP. Then he pointed to Villa Cafaggio, an estate on a more distant ridge, then La Massa, Castello dei Rampolla, and Fontodi on successive ridges to the southeast. All are in Panzano and are members of the UVP. He has much in common with the UVP producers. He shares many of their circumstances and perspectives. Like him, they are likely to be younger-generation owners. They are collaborative. They are innovative. They esteem the livelihood of farming. Their estates are biologic or moving in that direction. Given Poggio al Sole’s soil and elevation, it is a logical extension of Panzano. However, the members of the UVP have not accepted it into their fold. Poggio al Sole is in the township of Tavarnelle, not Greve. But Davaz believes that terroir should rule, not politics.

He turned and pointed in the opposite direction, down at the ancient monastery: “Perhaps we could be in a subzone identified by Badia a Passignano.” Though the connection with this well-preserved tourist destination would be a plus, the soils there are generally richer and less stony. Antinori owns all the vineyards around the badia, and while it is a good neighbor, its size and power put it in a different league.

Leaving the politics of land behind, Davaz took us to see Poggio al Sole. We visited the vineyards that encircle the estate. As we went, he told us the local name for each one. The mezzadri had a name for every single spot: Lo Stanzone (The large room), Greppi (Barren and steep hills), Corbezzolo (Arbutus), Campo di Acqua Calda (Field of hot water), Lupino (White lupin). Davaz and his workers still use them. One day they will be forgotten. They are preserved only in memory, not on paper. The original name of this estate was Casa Silia, which he has given to its Gran Selezione wine. He took us to a Sangiovese vineyard trained in Guyot on galestro-loaded soil. His southerly exposures are reserved for this premier grape. He explained that at the same elevation in Gaiole, temperatures would be cooler. This vineyard has an unobstructed southerly exposure. Then he took us to one facing Badia a Passignano. Here he had planted Canaiolo, which is normally harvested a few days before Sangiovese. Because it was not directly exposed to the sun, the Canaiolo here ripened at the same time as the Sangiovese. This vineyard was trained in modified alberello. Davaz pointed up to a spot high up, at five hundred meters (1,640 feet) of elevation. He wants to plant white grapes there and make a white wine. The vineyard will be named Vigna Kathrina, after his wife, Kathrin.

He then brought us to the winery. We could have been inside a precision Swiss watch. Order, cleanliness, and functionality surrounded us. Over the years, he has learned how to handle Sangiovese. He has abandoned the prefermentation maceration of harvested grapes that is commonly done in Burgundy with Pinot Noir and in Piedmont with Nebbiolo. It does not work with Sangiovese. Ten years ago, he did four punch-downs or pump-overs per day. That was too many. Now he does two per day. Eighty percent of the wine matures in barriques. The rest goes into large barrels.

The 2012 Chianti Classico annata was pale, with rich cherry in the nose. Oak was not evident. Sourness and alcohol were the principal actors on the palate, balancing each other out. The wine was sinewy in the mouth. The 2011 had similar characteristics, except that toasted oak was dominant in the nose. The nose of a 2008 had begun to show its age, with an earthy vegetal smell juxtaposed to the licorice residue of some new oak. In the mouth, the wine was quite astringent, in contrast to the 2012 and 2011.

The Casasilia is a big step up from the annata. Unlike the annata, which is 10 percent Canaiolo, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon, the Casasilia is 100 percent Sangiovese. The 2012, a Gran Selezione, had all the trappings of a prestige wine. It was darker. The nose had new toasted oak, raspberry, and the slight pungency of a little reduction, the wine’s insurance policy that it will be perfect in a few years’ time. It was big in all dimensions in the mouth, particularly alcohol and astringency. My notes summed it up: “Ripe, oaky, concentrated, but has freshness.” The 2010 Casasilia Riserva was one of the best wines that I tasted in 2015. The oak had merged into the wine. There were no signs of age in the nose or the mouth. The astringency was high but had begun to soften and move forward in the mouth. My summation notes were “great balance, still young.” The 2008 Casasilia Riserva had red fruits and cinder in the nose. The smell of cinder may be due to the maturation of toasted-oak extracts in the wine. In the mouth, the astringency had moved to the front and was quite delicate, a sign that the wine was mature, ready to be enjoyed.

QUERCIA AL POGGIO

After a long drive down a rocky dirt road through patches of forest interspersed with small vineyards and olive tree groves, we came to a wide black-metal gate in the woods between two stone posts. We were with Maurizio Castelli, the consulting enologist. He telephoned the owner of the estate behind the gate, Michela Rossi, to ask her to open it, then confided to us, “This winery is my heart. It really is my heart. They make an unbelievable Sangiovese.” As if on cue, the gate’s two doors slowly opened. We sped up the hill and parked near a cluster of enormous old cypresses. The late afternoon was clear and crisp. The sun was just beginning to set. And the wind was just beginning to pick up. Rossi came to greet us. We huddled close so we could hear the story of the estate. Perched on a hill at about four hundred meters (1,312 feet) above sea level, it was first an outpost for Vallombrosan monks affiliated with Badia a Passignano in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa. It has been privately owned and managed as an agricultural estate for about two hundred years. Its name, Quercia al Poggio, means “Oak on the hill.” From our vantage point, it looked like it should be named Cipresso al Poggio (Cypress on the hill). Michela and her husband, Vittorio Rossi, became its latest owner-caretakers in 1997. She is responsible for the commercial and hospitality aspects of the estate, while he manages its fifteen hectares (thirty-seven acres) of north- and south-facing vineyards (along with their resident farm manager, Gianfranco, and the Senegalese and freshly minted Italian citizen Gilli, their farmhand).

Pointing north toward a vineyard that sloped down the hill, Michela Rossi showed us where the estate’s Ciliegiolo vine variety is planted. In the distance we saw a pure white horse grazing in the stretch of grass between the edge of the vineyard and the forest line. This was her husband’s horse, Pioggia (Rain). Rossi explained that before the breakup of the mezzadria system, sixty people lived at Quercia al Poggio, mostly the sharecropper families who farmed the land. During World War II, the mezzadri here felt blessed to be sheltered from the bombing of the nearby town of Poggibonsi and to have plenty of food and other supplies. Only after the war did all of these families leave the farm to find prosperity and modernity in the surrounding towns. (The farmhouses on this property did not have electricity until 1962.) Not everyone abandoned the ship, though. Rossi told us about an eighty-four-year-old man, Mario Forconi, who had come to the estate when he was three months old with his family, who had become mezzadri on one of its poderi at that time. He had lived his entire life at Quercia al Poggio and had never been away for longer than two days. Rossi exclaimed, “It is incredible. When you see him, he is always laughing. He still insists on working in the vineyard, and he tends his own vegetable garden. Mario is our memoria storica [historical memory]. He is a part of our life.”

We walked over to see the vineyards on the eastern side of the property, where the Colorino variety is planted. As it was the height of autumn, the leaves of the harvested vines were a bright rubino (ruby), just like fine Chianti Classico wine. In a cage by the stone wall on the edge of the vineyard, we spied a living example of Chianti’s proud past. Inside strutted a black rooster, with two of his black-feathered hens in tow. His bright red comb and wattles were striking against his shiny black plumes. Rossi explained that Forconi had always dreamed of having a black rooster. So the Rossis gave him his very own gallo nero for his eightieth birthday. When the rooster suddenly died after a few years, it took the Rossis almost six months to find another one for Forconi. They were surprised to discover how rare Chianti’s native bird had become.

We strolled up the hill to see the estate’s vinsantaia (room for making vin santo). A few small cherrywood barrels were lined up atop a longer row of veteran oak barriques. One side of the room was open to the outdoors, facing north, and the other side was open to the south. This is where bunches of Trebbiano and Malvasia Bianca are traditionally hand-hung to dry before being vinified several months after their harvest (typically by February). As we stood talking in a circle near the vinsantaia, Castelli called out, “Ciao, Mario!” Rossi then introduced us to Quercia al Poggio’s oldest living vinedresser and gardener. Forconi is small and wiry. As he stood next to Castelli, he looked to be a foot shorter. He wore a sailor’s cap and a laughing smile. Rossi said that Forconi knew every patch of the property and the surrounding countryside. A couple of years earlier, when she and her husband had begun a project to renovate the cellars, he had warned them not to excavate in a certain spot because ceramic orci (large two-handled terra-cotta urns) were buried in the earth below. Rossi recounted that as they proceeded, they did indeed find two big ceramic urns (which now grace the main piazza in front of the estate’s private chapel). “Mario, is it true that there is a Chianti Fiorentino and a Chianti Senese?” we asked. He laughed and nodded his head. Rossi explained that he speaks an archaic form of Italian, with vocabulary and verb tenses from the vernacular Tuscan spoken in the time of Dante. At first it was difficult to understand him. But then it suddenly became clear that he was telling us the legend of how the Florentines had conquered Chianti from the Sienese. The retelling of this ancient tale filled him with glee. It was the furbi (artful or cunning) Florentines, he told us, who had duped the Sienese. They had dunked their black rooster in cold water so that it would crow earlier than the Sienese white rooster. We relished hearing this legend in Forconi’s medieval Tuscan. We wished him tante belle cose (many blessings) and continued our walk through Quercia al Poggio’s south-facing vineyards.

To the west of the estate, in a valley below, the RA3 between Florence and Siena cuts it off from the small part of Chianti Classico in Poggibonsi. To the southeast and south, respectively, are the hilltop vineyards of the Castello della Paneretta and Castello di Monsanto estates. The soil at Quercia al Poggio is mainly calcareous clay with some alberese rock. The clay gives the wines power and structure. The estate gets some protection on its western flank from a ridge in Poggibonsi that runs along the other side of the highway. Thus its climate is more continental than that of its neighbors to the southeast and south. According to Castelli, this terroir results in wines that are deep in color, low in aroma when young, and rich and astringent in the mouth. Thus, he says, the wines of Quercia al Poggio need time. Perhaps owing to this reason or their personal choice, the Rossis release their vintages several years later than is common in Chianti Classico. Vittorio keeps the wine blend reliant on native varieties: Sangiovese, Ciliegiolo, Canaiolo, and Colorino. The Riserva is 100 percent Sangiovese. The Chianti Classicos mature for much longer than the zone’s average, the annata for two years and the Riserva for thirty months in five-hundred-liter (132-gallon) tonneaux. The wines that I sampled, however, the 2011 annata and the 2010 annata and Riserva, had modest coloration and astringency. The astringency was slow to develop on the palate for all three wines. They were fine textured, not woody tasting. These wines are not pushed to be big. They are released when they are ready to drink. Of these three, the 2010 Riserva was the star. It had the deepest color and the most intense smells, of cherry, cinnamon, earth, and balsam. In the mouth, a strong dose of acidity refreshed and balanced the piquancy of alcohol. The 2010 annata had a similar profile, though it was fruitier, less woodsy, and less intense. Compared to it, the 2011 annata was paler, had some oak and riper cherry in the nose, and was notably low in astringency. The alcohol and acidity balanced each other well.

SAN CASCIANO CLASSICO

FATTORIA ISPOLI

Since 1999, Cristiano Castagno has been the resident agronomist and enologist at Fattoria Ispoli in Mercatale Val di Pesa. The vineyards are only 5.5 hectares (14 acres) in area. A small Renaissance tower blends into low buildings. They surround a courtyard. Ispoli in the late sixteenth century was the countryside home of Ippolita Machiavelli, the granddaughter of Niccolò Machiavelli, the famous philosopher. Castagno, who did archival research on the estate’s history, posits that the word Ippolita may have evolved into Ispoli. The owners today are the son and daughter of the late Bernd Mattheis, a German wine merchant.

In 2003, when I first visited Ispoli, Castagno took me out to the fields. He wore a straw hat over a red bandanna that was wrapped around his head. A small scythe and a bunch of plastic ties hung from his belt. For most of the day, he worked, topping, cutting away secondary shoots, and adjusting the vine vegetation, pushing it between or tying it back to the wires. The grass was several inches high between some rows. Other rows were clean cultivated. The topsoil was light brown, with a good measure of clay and without stones. The fertility was high, and Castagno was learning how to manage it. That evening in 2003, I enjoyed a simple meal with him, Rosangela, his wife, and their three children in the old stone house where for more than four centuries other families had eaten meals and shared conversation.

MAP 9

San Casciano Classico.

In 2015, I reconnected with Castagno, this time with Fran. During the previous summer, Rosangela had died suddenly. We sensed how alone he felt.

In the twelve years that had passed, he told us, he had learned to keep the estate’s fertility in check. At Ispoli, leaving the topsoil alone reduces the soil fertility just the right amount. The diversity of flora and fauna is good for the soil and vines. The only time he uses a plow is when he clean-cultivates during periods of drought and high temperatures. Loosening the topsoil allows humidity to rise up from the subsoil. Ispoli was one of the pioneers of organic farming in Chianti Classico. The surrounding woods insulate it from neighbors who farm conventionally.

The growing conditions present Castagno with other challenges. A succession of hot summers, with the exception of 2014, has left him puzzled about how to deal with wine alcohol levels over 14 percent. This concerns winegrowers throughout Chianti Classico. Even if he has mastered getting the best the soil can give him, it is difficult to preserve wine aromas and wine acidity, given the hot summer days of recent years and his estate’s low temperature variation, due to its lower-than-Chianti-average elevation, three hundred meters (984 feet). The high soil fertility and warm temperatures can also cause too-rapid ripening, leaving grape tannins less developed than Castagno would like. Overall, he finds his growing situation not dissimilar from some of the lower-altitude ones at Montalcino.

Though Sangiovese and Canaiolo are the principal players in his Chianti Classico annata and Riserva, there is some Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon planted that Castagno can use to adjust these wines. He also has barriques to boost the aroma and soften tannins as needed. He makes the wine from the vine to the glass.

For near-term drinking, I preferred the 2011 Chianti Classico annata to the 2010. It had a better balance of fruit and oak and was rich in the mouth. The nose of the 2010 was dominated by new toasted oak. It had more astringency and a more tactile texture. It needs at least three or four years to find its balance. One of the best wines that I have tasted recently is the 2008 Chianti Classico Riserva. The nose was a complex mix of balsam, boiled cherries, dust, and earth. The acidity seemed strong. I would have expected that this, combined with average astringency, to make for coarse wine. Three years of maturation in barrel and another four in bottle, however, had rounded the edges off both. The wine was mature. Ispolaia Rosso IGT is a barrique-kissed fruity 90 percent Sangiovese, 10 percent Syrah blend.

Castagno believes that the Chianti Classico consortium should allow grower-bottlers who make more than half of their income from their own production to print on the foil capsules of their wines a designation that identifies their commitment to farming as a livelihood. Given their costs, small farms like Ispoli need an effective way to differentiate their wines in the market from those of merchants who buy Chianti Classico bulk wine at below the cost of its production and sell it at rock-bottom prices. Castagno summed up why he works so hard: “My mission is to make a living for my soul.”

LE CORTI–CORSINI

The story goes that one could walk from Florence to Rome and never leave the property of the Corsinis. This family, which can chart its history back some eight hundred years, has been one of the largest landholders in Italy. However, it rarely, if ever, bottled wine suitable for export.

Duccio Corsini has changed that. In the early 1990s, he and his wife, Clotilde, renovated the family’s striking, two-towered palace in San Casciano. At the same time, he got the wine bug, replanted vineyards, refitted the palace’s vinification and maturation areas, and hired talented enological help.

The estate is immediately outside the town of San Casciano on SP92, the road to Mercatale, which runs along the crest of a ridge. The palace sits at the top of the southwestern flank, and its forty-nine hectares (121 acres) of vineyards extend southwest from 350 down to 220 meters (1,148 down to 722 feet) at Terzona Creek. The soil is of Pliocene origin. Round stones dull its natural fertility and provide drainage.

The 2012 Chianti Classico annata stepped out first with its cherry and second with a woodsy note from some barriques. Most of it matures in cement. It is a solid, well-balanced wine from a difficult vintage.

A 2011 Cortevecchia Chianti Classico Riserva reflected the extreme heat and drought of the vintage. It tasted overripe. The high alcohol made the wine top heavy in body and deficient in structure.

The 2010 Dom Tommaso Chianti Classico Gran Selezione was a dark, concentrated, oaky, vegetal, and astringent wine. The Gran Selezione category has reinforced the idea that with respect to Chianti Classico, “bigger is better.” This message comes not just from the producers but also from the Gran Selezione discipline. Cutting down on the amount of Merlot, now 20 percent of the blend, would move this wine closer to native Chianti Classico.

Zac, dedicated to Zia (aunt) Anna Corsini, the great-great-aunt of Duccio Corsini, debuted with the 2008 vintage. It is an IGT Toscana. The grapes, 100 percent Sangiovese, are harvested from the Gugliaie (pronounce that one!) vineyard. The 2010 Zac was pale red, with a vibrant cherry nose. Though its alcoholic content is high at 15 percent, it did not taste heavy or overripe. The wine had matured for eighteen months in barrels of various sizes. The oak had added spices, particularly mint, to the nose. This is a wine of finesse and elegance.

PODERE LA VILLA

In 2003, Giacomo Tachis decided to replant an old vineyard, 1.25 hectares (3 acres) in area, in front of Podere La Villa, an agriturismo that his daughter and only child, Ilaria, was managing for the family. It was down the road from the Antinori San Casciano wine production facility on Via Pisignano. The Tachis family lived elsewhere in the town. Tachis’s longtime friend and collaborator and fellow Sancascianese Valerio Barbieri recommended that he choose Sangiovese and Merlot for the vineyard. The vines were planted. The initial idea was that the family would sell the grapes to add to its income. We can only assume, however, that one day Tachis would have made his first wine. All his life, he had made wine for other people.

Within several years, he became ill and less able to continue his life as before. The responsibility to develop the vineyard increasingly rested with Ilaria. Family friends came to her aid. Alessandro Cellai, the technical director of the Castellare winery in Castellina, counseled her on the exposure and soil of her vineyards. Because there is as yet no vinification facility at the villa, the Di Napoli family at Castello dei Rampolla in Panzano has provided vinification, maturation, and bottling facilities. Markus von der Planitz, the estate’s fixed enologist, has wet-nursed and babysat the wines. Elisabetta Barbieri, a consulting agronomist specializing in enology, also keeps a watchful eye on them. The Tachis family winery, Podere La Villa, could not be in more caring hands. Meanwhile, Ilaria’s husband, Raffaele D’Amico, has become increasingly involved in the farm. At our last visit, in 2015, he was learning how to drive a tractor.

The first harvest, the 2006, was good but very small. The family sold the grapes. The next year, there were two harvests. The same day that the vineyards were harvested, Ilaria gave birth to her first son, Riccardo. He is the first grandson of Giacomo and his wife, Maria. Given the importance of the day, September 7, 2007, the family decided to vinify this harvest. Though its 2007 wine was not registered as Chianti Classico, its 2008 was. The name of the wine is Pargolo, old Italian for “young child.”

In 2010, the family issued a 100 percent Merlot wine, named Paggio, from paggetto, or “page boy.” Nicoló, Ilaria’s second son, born in 2009, had a burst of blond hair that gave him this look. With Maria and Giacomo passing away within one year, these wines celebrate the theme of new life and a new road.

Over the years, the Tachis family has purchased more vineyards. It now owns about seven hectares (seventeen acres). Recently, the original vineyard was expanded to 2.5 hectares (6 acres). The elevation is about 210 meters (689 feet), and the soil is filled with round stones and fossil seashells.

Ilaria Tachis has supported the recent creation of the Viticoltori del Chianti Classico Sancascianese, an association of San Casciano producers. The town lacks an image, and it needs one, particularly if the system of using comune names is adopted. That there are three large producers, Antinori, Castello di Gabbiano, and Le Corti, at one extreme and many small ones at the other may complicate the association.

I sampled the 2011 Podere La Villa Chianti Classico. The vineyard of origin is the 1.25 hectares (3 acres) planted in 2003. Production is minuscule. The vineyard faces west-northwest. The wine matures for eighteen months in small oak casks. The grape blend is 80 percent Sangiovese and 20 percent Merlot. The nose had woodsy, minty, cindery, and ripe red fruit smells. The wine had a high degree of body, due to its relatively high alcohol content. However, this was balanced by moderately high acidity and astringency. The wine had a wide range of flavors and was surprisingly ready to drink.

Paggio is 100 percent Merlot. It is meant to be a lighter, more ready-to-drink wine. The 2012 matured in second- and third-use oak barrels, making a wine that emphasizes fruit over structure. The nose smelled of cherries and cinnamon. The wine had a lot of body from its high alcohol content. The astringency was low. The acidity alone balanced the alcohol.

Giacomo Tachis would be proud.