Winemaker Notes
The wine is medium to full-bodied, offering abundant fruit and floral notes with aromas of ripe cherries and violet, and a crisp finish, making it an excellent match for salami, cheese, pasta, poultry, or grilled meat.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A restrained and classic wine with graphite, dark fruit, vibrant violets, smoke and incense. Joyful palate with a smooth texture, velvety tannins, a medium body, crisp acidity and an austere finish that’s well covered by the fruit. A wine intended for aging.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Brancaia is a charming wine estate nestled in the thick forests of Radda in Chianti with wild boar and roe deer. The organic 2022 Chianti Classico Riserva shows a savory side and lot of blackberry. The Riserva is shaped by a warm vintage, but the wine also reveals more oak detailing with nutmeg and sweet cinnamon. The wine shows extra textural weight and concentration in this vintage.
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Vinous
The 2022 Chianti Classico Riserva is terrific. Dark and enveloping, the 2022 offers great depth in a fairly plush style that can be enjoyed with minimal cellaring. Succulent dark cherry, plum, new leather, liquorice and incense are nicely turned up. The 2022 is all charm.
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.