Evolution of Chianti Wine from Our Point Of View

Maybe you should be surprised to know that the biggest production of wines in chianti since the etruscan era to the moders times was white wine. Before the discover of chemistry applications to the country products, the only soluction to chiantishire - passo dei pecorai - all rights reservedmake and conserve wines was to produce, them directly in the fields with high quality methods. Agronomy was very important and people were using the best field for each different kind of plant: olives was locate in north oriented parcels; south, south-west oriented fields only had a deep permanent plantation of grapes to capture all the sunlight (photosintesis). Farmers were terracing their field slopes in which terraces are supported by buteres walls to stop the erosion of the water and after that, they were well draining each single slope, to defend the plants from the dry summers and wet falls. In fact this is really the best agronomic soluction to get the best from the local pedolocial situation and keep as much as possible a kind of controll on the local climate conditions.

For all people was very important to find the original taste of the grapes in the final product: this is in fact the most important factor which easely allow all consumers to recognise a genuine wine, since the first approach. Oak caskes were very apreciaded after seventy-eighty years only, when all tannis left the woods and they could conserve the wine without giving them a strange and unnatural wood taste. In fact this was very logical and it was following the usuall way to do: it was (and it is) very stupid to cook a first quality fillet with green pepper!!! To follow this philosophy, sometimes farmer where using a big terracotta orcio instead a wood barrel named "tino" for the fermentation of the juice. Terracotta was the only substitute of the wood, during preparation of little special productions. In fact and orcio was very expensive compared to a wood barrel and was very easy to breake it also during the normal orperation they had to do, during the vinification. Really a few people were able to do it. The invention of th the glass and the massification of glass-bottles, give to the farmer more possibilities to conserve, trasport and sell the wine. A special bottle named "fiasco" with a capacity of 1,5 litre of wine became very usual: was pratical and the wine was keept far from the wood. A bigger fiasco named "damigiana" (55 litres about) was used directly in cellars and transport bigger quantity of wine

Bettino Ricasoli, Baron of Ricasoli (1808-1890, the first Italian Prime Minister after the unification), had a great passion for wine and grapes. He had the idea who changed the way to make wine in chianti: he wrote the recipe of Chianti Classico and he deposited it at Accademia of Georgofili, a school for agricoltural research and studyes, founded by the same Bettino Ricasoli. All people for half 19th century, can go there and read about chianti classico. In fact this the real and the only recipe of that wine: Sangiovese "who gives body and colour (till 7/10)"; Red Canaiolo or tuscancally called Black Canaiolo, "who gives parfume and softness (till 2/10)"; White trebbiano and white malvasia "who give acidity and light smoothness (till 2/10). The last kind of grape allowed is named "colorino" who has no taste but it gives additional colour to grape juices when poor of red pigmentation.

Historically we all have to remeber that in ancient times farmer were not the onwer of the land they were working but they were part of big farm controlled by the aristochracy of the time. They assigned to each family chief a house and fields to work depending the number of components of the family and the reachness of the fields. The best fields where normally assigned to the people the owner was taking care more. Some others were really reach of stones and it was dofficult to work with: the stones removed from the fields they had to build walls, hay-barns, stables, and all the building needed for the coutry work. Space was not too much and yeat by year they had to save space for the new wine. Part of the wine production of the year was dedicated to be sold very fast. Farmer were preparing a kind of wine destinated to a very fast commercialisation, it was ready after three months from the autumn hearvest. They saved some grapes from the harvest and hang on them at a wickerwork shelf to dry them. After 20-25 days from the main squeeze, they made another second squeeze with this grapes and fresher juice was added at the first for a second fermentation:and at the end of this work a special fresh and a little a bit sparky wine with and higher deegree of halcool, was ready to be drank.

Compared to autochthonus plants, the modern seleced clones we find now in 90% of farms have thinner grape skin and bigger grapes. They resist worst to the "crazy" autumn showers tipical of the reason: They break itself easyl under the power of the falling rain or after the plant adsorbe it from the soil, they dry slower cause they are very close. Consequently it's easy to find is botrytys on the grapes and there is a close relaction between the rain and the produtcion destructed.

In autum, chianti storm can be really violent and during the centuryes, the local selected grape-plant had more little grapes with a thicker skin to resist to the rain and get dry better. In fact was easy to loose part of production during some wet falls. Actually almost all farmers replanted all the fields with modern clones which are able to produce bigger grapes with thinner skin. Erytime there are wet autumns a proportional part of production is going away with the rain. It's easyer there is botritys (cynerea) on the grapes, and not sun enough for maturation. At the end, there is to considere the different quantity of production per hectar: with traditional plants it was about 4 tonns per hectar and now after a summer pruning (leaving the best grapes only), it's about 8-9 tonns per hectar. I can surely say that farmers evolved theirself in producers. Percentage of halcool was not followint them and from the usual 12,00-13,00 and sometimes 14,00° H/liter, they had 9,00-10,00 ° liter! People could not really sell a wine so light like that: the first, and the most logical soluction for all, was to buy a juice-concentrator machine. Reacher farmes atopted the system immediately discoverying very fast that these machined work really very good. After the concentration process, they found out that they were concentrating everything: alcool, good and bad things, just everything!

In fact during the years from 1980 till 1990 they had to balance a world of transformation. People passed from a local little production with many different high quality wines, to a massive production with an international flatter taste. To go in that direction, was not a big problems: all the old plants as told were cut and replanted, then to conserve some taste they have to make a summer pruning, they have to separate white and red grapes and have to people able to deal and resolve the yearly problem of the wine: the micribiologist and the enologist. The first one analizes the grapes and the components, he gives the results to the enologist which is making all needed corrections! As obviously chianti classico has chaned so much that they couldn't make a so different winr compared to the real recipe. Soluction was founded a few years ago they: they just changed it. Actually Chianti Classico is as follow: till 100% sangiovese, till 10% canaiolo, malvasia and trebbiano white max 6% and till maximum 15% merlot and or cabernet-sauvignon (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

We still asking to ourself what is the relaction of this french grapes with our culture and our history but we are still without an "good" answer. The only reasonable reason about, is the special nature of these grapes which have a very strong taste and parfume, they are able to cover a big casprini chianti classico 1953part of wine defects and at the same time they have an "international" taste. Traditionally for a good chianti classico (the real one), we used old oak barrel (not younger than 80 years), which they slowly lost their tannin because anybody wanted cover the smell and taste of the grapes. In modern chianti classico and probably for the same reasons, producers change the old casks with new ones, they are making now, mostly barriques wines.

We still have our own personal idea about all this transformation. Maybe people took too much attention to make a more "easy" wine with a simpler approach and they took too much time to find a perfect formal balance of the wine components just forgetting that there are no reason to destroy our own culture, our tradition in the name of a flatter, "gobalized" tasted (note: there is no political meanin behind this word, this is just a fact). Chianti Classico is still a great wine, but it's not any more a chianti classico, it's not our wine. No one saved some fields, some best production. Tehy cut them all and there is no way for years and years to make a similiar traditional product. Chianti classic is a sangiovese made in chianti, a merlot made in chianti or whatever... but NOT anymore our wine.

This is unaccetable for us. I always give to our guest this words to think about, Michelangelo's David in florence is surely one of the marvelous sculpture never made by a man during the human history. That statue just because is made by a man is imperfect, it has big head, feet and hands; it's proportions are not correct but emotion and the force you get looking at the statue is really powerful. "That's really an alive man came out from the marmor". People go to see that unique thing cause that's important, not the thousands of perfect copyes made by machines and sold outside the musum on the souvenir's desk. Drink is like eat, it's first a pleasure not an onwer, like to live.

In our cellar there is half history of our wine. We can open a bottle of 1964 and finding it drinkable with a special taste of a marvelous old wine. I cannot open any bottle from 1980-86 because it's all "broken": it's like the work made in cellar's separed through the years and the wines now has ....really a crazy taste. We have a few bottles from the start of the last century and much more time after time. The oltest bottle is from 1911 the yourger 1988 with a total of 32,000 bottle. The biggest and more complete collection of Chianti Classico actually existing. Take a chance just to vist it with not wines only!