Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Sangiovese
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A spicy and deep wine with intense, savory aromas of graphite, black pepper and smoke. Serious Chianti Classico with red and black cherries and minerals. It’s full-bodied with ripe, velvety tannins and long, crisp acidity. There is stunning savoriness, length and tension. Drinkable now, but best from 2026.
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Wine Spectator
This red is etched with pure, juicy cherry and raspberry fruit, along with mineral, wild herb and sweet spice notes. Elegant, intense and beautifully balanced, leaving a seamless and complex finish. Drink now through 2038.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Barone Ricasoli 2022 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Gaiole Castello di Brolio offers plump primary fruit and lightly applied oak nuances that add volume and depth. This is one of the flagship wines of the estate, and it shows consistent results over the years. In many ways, it is the estate's most representative bottle, made with 100% Sangiovese harvested from the plots immediately adjacent to the landmark Brolio Castle on a mix of soils that includes Macigno del Chianti (sandstone), galestro (schist) and alberese (limestone). It offers a velvety close, some light spice and tart cherry over a velvety finish. It matures in tonneaux for 22 months with 20% new oak.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Castello di Brolio is a seriously beautiful, elegant wine. Ample on the palate, with gorgeous freshness, the 2022 is also very complete. Cedar, sweet pipe tobacco, macerated cherry, liquorice and mocha are some of the many nuances that start to take shape with some coaxing. What a gorgeous wine this is.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose opens savory, with hot tar, petrol, crushed rocks and herbs, before aromas of sweet, ripe blackberries gradually begin to swirl from the glass. Those sweet berries take over on the palate, but a current of salt and citrus adds buoyancy, and dense, chalky tannins provide an anchor.
Among Italy's elite red grape varieties, Sangiovese has the perfect intersection of bright red fruit and savory earthiness and is responsible for the best red wines of Tuscany. While it is best known as the chief component of Chianti, it is also the main grape in Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and reaches the height of its power and intensity in the complex, long-lived Brunello di Montalcino. Somm Secret—Sangiovese doubles under the alias, Nielluccio, on the French island of Corsica where it produces distinctly floral and refreshing reds and rosés.
One of the first wine regions anywhere to be officially recognized and delimited, Chianti Classico is today what was originally defined simply as Chianti. Already identified by the early 18th century as a superior zone, the official name of Chianti was proclaimed upon the area surrounding the townships of Castellina, Radda and Gaiole, just north of Siena, by Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany in an official decree in 1716.
However, by the 1930s the Italian government had appended this historic zone with additonal land in order to capitalize on the Chianti name. It wasn’t until 1996 that Chianti Classico became autonomous once again when the government granted a separate DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) to its borders. Ever since, Chianti Classico considers itself no longer a subzone of Chianti.
Many Classicos are today made of 100% Sangiovese but can include up to 20% of other approved varieties grown within the Classico borders. The best Classicos will have a bright acidity, supple tannins and be full-bodied with plenty of ripe fruit (plums, black cherry, blackberry). Also common among the best Classicos are expressive notes of cedar, dried herbs, fennel, balsamic or tobacco.