2020 Querciabella Chianti Classico

Community Tasting Notes (3) Avg Score: 90.7 points

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  2/17/2024 - Dr S Likes this wine: 90 Points

  A pleasure indeed and hard to improve on Komrade Rote K’s note below. It’s been a while since I’ve supped from a bottle of fresh Chianti Classico, or this maker for that matter.
  
  This is very fine. It needs time to breathe and the dusty oak to depart the stage, but all is in order. Cherry and cranberry, for sure, on nose and palate.
  
  Fresh, balanced, middling intensity as you’d expect in a CC. A tidy package. And yet, I wanted a little more oomph, grunt and bite. I haven’t tried the 2019s but I get it when Rote K says he misses the extra grip that year delivers. This is a far better model than I recall from the rough hewn Querciabellas of the 90s. But I’d trade a bit of finesse for some heft and grit on the palate, I think.
  
  As for ageing, I wouldn’t bother. This is in a good place. It might get better but that I suspect would be a case of diminishing returns. Drink in the moment.

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  2/2/2024 - Rote Kappelle Likes this wine: 91 Points

  What a pleasurable wine this is. It is like the feeling you get when you slip on a pair of comfortable slippers on the first cool night of Autumn. The qualities of the 2020 vintage and the proclivities of the maker really come together here to make what I find to be an extremely approachable wine, though it will cellar.
  
  Personally, I like the extra grip, intensity and depth of the 2019's, but 2020 is more open textured. In this wine I think there is a slight question about whether the fruit has the depth to benefit from long term cellaring, but Sangiovese can surprise in this regard, so I think be guided by better palates and what other writers say.
  
  This is quite textbook modern Sangiovese, with bright and varietal Sangiovese fruit supported by tasteful and sensitive use of oak. I get cherry, rose petal (I also want to say rose hip, but now I am really having a wank - what next? A discussion on the kind of cherry?) and some really attractive, tart red fruit - I will say Cranberry, while serious tasters roll about laughing. Some nice earthy, pencil shaving and smokey notes and those dried herb characters that I find intoxicating. There are definitely plenty of fine tannins here and cleansing acid, too, but if these trouble you I do wonder if you are just in need of working on, possibly whilst black pods are set upon your 'delicate parts' in the small hours of the night. Jake the poacher is watching you.
  
  On the oak, I think you might have to know it is there to really pick it. They use a mix of small and large oak over 24 months. I can't get details on how much is new oak but my guess is that the proportion is quite low.
  
  Wonderful drinking at this price. Lyle Lovett compared to Townes Van Zandt - a very fine lyricist and musician compared to a genius. But you are not paying genius prices and I am always really happy listening to Lyle Lovett. At some point the place of Paul Kelly in this group has to be discussed. You can think about your own Sangiovese equivalents.

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  1/22/2024 - richard.presser wrote: 88 Points

  Medium red.
  Nose initially quite closed but an hour sees it opening up.
  Good fruit structure but currently overwhelmed by the acid especially, the tannin not far behind. IMO, needs 10 years to show itself properly. The fruit suggests it will.

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