Winemaker Notes
The main color feature of this wine is a dark red color with a ruby hue. Juicy and fruity with soft tannins with aromas of prune and cherry.
This wine pairs well with red meat especially with fat kind and cold cuts like salami and prosciutto. Pasta with heavier sauces combinations – for example, lasagna. Also, with intense tastes that we find in medium matured sheep cheeses and blue cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
A beam of intense cherry shines through this densely structured red, keeping it defined and energetic. Iron, earth and tobacco flavors add depth as this stays long, with mouthcoating tannins on the finish. Best from 2023 through 2045.
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Decanter
One is immediately engaged, as by a flickering fire, by this wine’s tones of ruby and orange. The aromas and flavours are also warm, reminding me of getting into a car with leather upholstery on a hot day. Sangiovese is, unmistakably, on top form here. There is a playful sweet and savoury note on the palate, a sea saltiness and a certain weightiness that is revived by pert sour-cherry fruit. A handsome riserva from a super vintage.
Drinking Window 2021 - 2030
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Chianti Classico Riserva is a round, intense and plummy expression with a pretty bouquet of intense berry fruit. The wine is beautifully contoured and rich, with background notes of spice and sweet tobacco that do the trick. It's a solid choice for a hearty meatloaf. This Riserva ages in both cement and tonneaux for 18 months.
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.