Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Castello di Ama Al Poggio Chardonnay is a clear yellow with brilliant golden nuances. The wine exudes aromas of summer flowers and fruits, such as banana, pineapple, and apricot. Decisive and delicate attack on the palate. Excellent freshness. Very good persistency and length.
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Castello di Ama 2018 Chardonnay di Toscana Al Poggio benefits from high-altitude vineyards (at about 500 meters above sea level) and the cool limestone soils of the Chianti Classico region to create this fresh, crisp and delightfully approachable white wine. There are Chardonnays from Tuscany that taste like Chardonnays from any other part of the world, and then there are Chardonnays that taste like they come from Tuscany. This wine is firmly in that second group. The distinctively territory-specific elements you get here resemble apricot and peach, with light dustings of Italian herbs such as fresh oregano and rosemary sprig. I also noted the pristine mineral notes that frame this vintage. There is a fun blast of citrus that reminds me of those sun-kissed lemon trees grown in red clay pots that you see all over this part of Tuscany.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
One of the most iconic Italian regions for wine, scenery and history, Tuscany is the world’s most important outpost for the Sangiovese grape. Tuscan wine ranges in style from fruity and simple to complex and age-worthy, Sangiovese makes up a significant percentage of plantings here, with the white Trebbiano Toscano coming in second.
Within Tuscany, many esteemed wines have their own respective sub-zones, including Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. The climate is Mediterranean and the topography consists mostly of picturesque rolling hills, scattered with vineyards.
Sangiovese at its simplest produces straightforward pizza-friendly Tuscan wines with bright and juicy red fruit, but at its best it shows remarkable complexity and ageability. Top-quality Sangiovese-based wines can be expressive of a range of characteristics such as sour cherry, balsamic, dried herbs, leather, fresh earth, dried flowers, anise and tobacco. Brunello, an exceptionally bold Tuscan wine, expresses well the particularities of vintage variations and is thus popular among collectors. Chianti is associated with tangy and food-friendly dry wines at various price points. A more recent phenomenon as of the 1970s is the “Super Tuscan”—a red wine made from international grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, with or without Sangiovese. These are common in Tuscany’s coastal regions like Bolgheri, Val di Cornia, Carmignano and the island of Elba.