Chianti, at its best, is delicious and fruity in its youth, august and ethereal as it ages–a wine that, in the words of the Italian poet Fulvio Testi, “kisses you and bites you and makes you shed sweet tears.”
When you learn of its history and its rules, you marvel they’re able to make it at all. But when you try some of its new styles, you’re very glad they do.
Traditionally, Chianti has been made by an odd “recipe” of grapes–sangiovese, canaiolo and colorino, all red grapes, plus trebbiano and malvasia, both white. The blend was created in 1880 by the Baron Bettino Ricasoli, head of a noble wine family and one-time prime minister of Italy.
His reasoning: Sangiovese, in a cool year, can be thin, harsh and acidic, needing canaiolo for aroma, colorino for color and the white grapes for softness.
There was another reason, too, according to modern-day winemaker Stefano Cinelli Colombini of Fattoria dei Barbi. Tuscany was booming in those days, eager to export its wines to the United States, he says. Unfortunately, one of the main transfer points was New Orleans, then one of America’s most primitive ports–hot, poorly organized, lacking proper storage.
So the canny Tuscans took two steps: First, they invented the “fiasco”–the straw-covered flask that became Chianti’s trademark–to protect the bottles from breaking on the rough voyage.
Second, they knew that the red sangiovese grape, when it oxidized in poor storage, turned lighter in color. But when the two white grapes oxidized, they turned darker. So the white grapes would, ironically, help Chianti keep the dark color that denoted richness.
It worked. Chianti became America’s favorite Italian wine. Over time, Chianti’s popularity became its worst enemy. A few greedy producers, unable to meet demand, started adding more and more white grapes. By 1963, when Chianti first won the Italian government’s coveted DOC (“Denominazione di Origine Controllata”) status for its wines, it was under rules permitting up to 30 percent white grapes.
Result: A pale and pallid Chianti.
Winemakers eventually saw their folly. And when, in 1984, Chianti won the higher, DOCG (the “G” is for “garantita”) status, the rules were changed to permit no more than 10 percent white grapes.
Even that was too little, too late for some winemakers. Piero Antinori, whose family had been making wine since the 1400s, had begun breaking the rules in the mid-1970s. His new wine, Tignanello, dropped the white grapes and blended the traditional red sangiovese with Tuscan versions of the French Bordeaux grape cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc.
The world hailed Antinori’s new wine; it sells today for $50 a bottle. But it was heresy to Tuscan traditionalists. And the wine laws wouldn’t let him call it Chianti. So Antinori banded with like-minded winemakers to create a new name–“Super Tuscan” wines.
Ever since, Tuscan winemakers have split into two camps: those seeking to perfect Chianti and those preferring to make Super Tuscans.
Beginning with the 1996 harvest, Chianti’s wine rules are changing yet again–to give winemakers the freedom to make the best wines they can.
Chianti today can be 100 percent sangiovese or as little as 75 percent. Up to 10 percent canaiolo or none at all. Up to 10 percent white grapes or none at all.
Most remarkably, it can have as much as 10 percent of two of France’s top red grapes–cabernet sauvignon and merlot.
The new freedom has touched off an explosion of experimentation. But many winemakers did not even wait for the new laws to be enacted.
“It wasn’t permitted until now, but everybody was doing it,” says Francesco Mazzei, a member of the family that owns Tuscany’s Castello Fonterutoli. “As they replanted their vineyards, nobody has been planting the white grapes.”
The Mazzei family epitomizes both directions in which Tuscan wines are moving.
Its 1993 Chianti Classico Riserva, called “Ser Lapo” after a 14th Century founder of the family’s wine estates, is 100 percent sangiovese–and thus made under the new rules. The richer, fuller sangiovese grape created by new grape clones and better growing methods no longer needs the other grapes.
In the other direction, Castello Fonterutoli’s 1993 Brancaia is a Super Tuscan wine because its blend, 85 percent sangiovese and 15 percent merlot, has too much of the non-traditional grape to be called Chianti.
Mazzei loves the freedom.
“We grow sangiovese, cabernet sauvignon and merlot, so we don’t want to say `This is always the recipe or the formula.’ It will depend on the vintage. In cooler vintages, we might make our Chianti with 2 or 3 percent cabernet sauvignon or merlot.
“Now we can do what works.”
