Community Tasting Note

• Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 93 points

  February 25, 2023 - I really loved this wine and if I rated just for pleasure it would surely be rated as 'Stormy Daniels' on the Schtiffie Grippe Sliding Scale of Wine Onanism. In translation, one feels it loses something, as we look to the more prosaic CT scale. I think it deserves to be on the cusp between 'Excellent' and 'Outstanding'.
  
  The wine comes from a relatively high altitude site and uses only traditional Chianti varieties - overwhelmingly Sangiovese but with some Mammolo, Colorino and the very well known Foglia Tonda (yes, you cry out 'not more Foglia Tonda! We are sick of drinking nothing but Foglia Tonda.'). This is beautiful, elegant wine that speaks to me of all that is best in Chianti. Oak doesn't seem a big presence, although the wine is given time in small oak botticelli - I suspect the oak is not new or high char.
  
  This is also one of the best 2019 Tuscan's I have had. The vintage, being warm, always risks losing some definition but the higher altitude perhaps came to the rescue. The tannins are beautifully ripe, the cherry fruit is crunchy but not sour and the acid defines the wine but does not make it stern.
  
  I am still trying to sort out my thoughts on Chinati Classico DOCG, Toscana IGT and so on. I can't help but wonder if the Italians are the same. This IGT is perhaps the most quintessentially Chianti wine I have had for some time, which makes it feel odd that it is not DOCG Classico. But the complexities of all that have to be the subject of a doctoral thesis, probably unreadable.

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3 Comments

• Houla1218 commented:

  6/20/23, 7:01 PM - A lot of wineries simply don’t want to be constrained by the rules of DOCG even though the wines fully qualify. It has nothing to do with quality or ability to conform.

• Rote Kappelle commented:

  6/20/23, 8:15 PM - Thanks Houla, my point was not about quality etc. I may have expressed myself inelegantly.
  
  My point was that it is intriguing that a wine that conforms with CC DOCG requirements chooses to be IGT. I can't find out why and whilst it just might be that they can't be bothered, one suspects it may be about the politics of the region - but I don't know.
  
  It is really an almost uniquely Tuscan problem. Whilst there was a time when Barbaresco faced a similar sort of problem with Gaja it never really developed. The CC DOCG is really no, or not much different to, say, the requirements for Barolo or Barbaresco or Burgundy or CdP etc. Yet we don't see breakaway classifications, or those who conform choosing not to call themselves CdP (as far as I am aware).
  
  A lot of the IGT's use grapes in quantity and or of type that are not in conformity with CC DOCG, but that isn't the case with Boncie.
  
  Should IGT and CC DOCG just be tossed out? If they are should they be replaced or should we just go for a regional boundary and say use what you like, do what you like?
  
  In Oz that is the way it works. You can make a 'Coonawarra' wine out of any grape you want provided it comes from within the boundaries of the geographical region. But you can't do that in Burgundy, or CdP for example. Yet historically both Burgundy and Bordeaux sometimes used Rhone grapes to give body, especially in difficult years. Should we allow that now?
  
  What makes a wine 'Burgundy' or 'Chianti Classico' or 'Napa' or 'Coonawarra'? Does it even matter?
  
  Those are the questions I was, inelegantly, trying to drive at.
  
  In Oz, there was a time when Semillon was used to make wines that did bear reasonable resemblance to 'Riesling', 'White Burgundy', 'Chablis' and Shiraz likewise with 'Claret', 'Hermitage', 'Red Burgundy'. These all came from the same region, for example the Hunter River, or Great Western or Coonawarra. Does that mean that the wine maker and viticulture are at least as important in imparting identity as the actual grapes used and the region they are grown in?
  
  Thoughts?

• Houla1218 commented:

  6/21/23, 4:23 AM - From interviews and profiles I’ve read, many of the producers that conform but don’t participate in the DOC/DOCG scheme do so for philosophical or political reasons. Ex they see low quality mass producers given a DOCG label which renders it almost meaningless, in their opinion.
  
  But this happens all over Italy. For example, Nusserhof. Check out the book Vino by Joe Campanele for a dive into the artisanal wine movement in Italy for dozens of more examples.

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