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.
Founded in 1865, Bibbiano is located in the historic Chianti region, in the municipality of Castellina in Chianti, overlooking the Elsa Valley towards the castle of Monteriggioni. Today’s owners, Tommaso and Federico Marrocchesi Marzi, are the fifth generation. Surrounded by vast olive groves consisting of over three thousand trees, Bibbiano’s vineyards cover an area of about 25 hectares, at an altitude ranging from 270 to 300 meters, with enviable exposure and excellent microclimate. The vineyards consist of plants of Sangiovese and Sangiovese Grosso grapes as well as a smaller quantity of Colorino.
Tenuta di Bibbiano was the longest standing consultancy of famed winemaker Giulio Gambelli, also famous for his long relationships with Montevertine and Case Basse di Soldera. Their decades-long association with Gambelli, under whom Bibbiano’s current winemaker trained, still lives on in their traditional approach to winemaking and their commitment to 100%-pure Sangiovese wines. Harvest is still done manually and grapes carefully selected, with different vinification procedures according to the position of the slopes on which the grapes were grown. They are committed to replanting vineyards using wood poles and columns and by planting only autochthonous grapes. Bibbiano is committed to promoting conservative renovation of the farms, in order to not lose their architectural and human heritage and its very ancient history. The estate was certified organic in 2011.
Tommaso Marrocchesi Marzi is a leading voice in the push to establish formal village appellations in Chianti Classico and is a great supporter of the new Gran Selezione category, which requires wines labeled as such to be made exclusively from estate fruit and bottled at the origin. With the 2014 vintage, Bibbiano raised their Montornello Riserva to a Gran Selezione, lowering production significantly. The Montornello, now a limited production single-vineyard Riserva, comes from the northern face of the estate where calcareous clay and stony alberese soils give the wine its distinctive acidity and red-fruited profile. Capannino continues on as a Gran Selezione Riserva, featuring the dense structure and rich, black fruits that result from these reddish-brown, clay-rich soils planted exclusively to Sangiovese Grosso. This year also sees the inaugural release of a Chianti Classico Riserva, made from exclusively from the Sangiovese da Chianti clone grown on the Montornello side of the property and selected after the very best bunches are picked for the Montornello single-vineyard bottling. Aged 18 months in 50/50 used tonneaux and cement tanks, it replaces the price point vacated by the elevation of the Montornello and offers outstanding quality for the price.
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.