Winemaker Notes
Golden yellow, with coppery highlights. Peach, apricot, pineapple and tropical dried fruit aromas. Consistency on the palate, softness and elegance nicely structured by the oak barrels. Wine with great balance, favorable acidity and a well-harmonized residual sugar. Long in the mouth.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Vin Santo del Chianti Classico (available in a precious 375-milliliter bottle) shows extraordinary softness and creaminess in terms of texture. It really is quite a feat, considering seven long years of aging in small caratelli barrels. The full-bodied blend of Sangiovese, Malvasia and Trebbiano is redolent of raw honey, candied chestnut, brown sugar and softly cured tobacco. Its appearance shines with hues of copper and gold. This is such a special treat to taste, and luckily.
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Wine Spectator
This dessert white has a viscous texture that envelops honey, caramel, vanilla and bitter almond flavors. Intense, building to a long, concentrated and spicy aftertaste. Malvasia, Trebbiano and Sangiovese. Drink now.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Famous for its food-friendly, approachable red wines and their storied history, Chianti is perhaps the best-known wine region of Italy. This appellation within Tuscany has it all: sweeping views of rolling hills, endless vineyards, the warm Mediterranean sun, hearty cuisine and a rich artistic heritage. Chianti includes seven subzones: Chianti Colli Fiorentini, Rufina, Montalbano, Colli Senesi, Colline Pisane, Colli Aretini and Montespertoli, with area beyond whose wines can be labeled simply as Chianti.
However the best quality comes from Chianti Classico, in the heart of the Chianti zone, which is no longer a subzone of the region at all but has been recognized on its own since 1996. The Classico region today is delimited by the confines of the original Chianti zone protected since the 1700s.
Chianti wines are made primarily of Sangiovese, with other varieties comprising up to 25-30% of the blend. Generally, local varieties are used, including Canaiolo, Colorino and Mammolo, but international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah are allowed as long as they are grown within the same zone.
Basic, value-driven Chianti wine is simple and fruit-forward and makes a great companion to any casual dinner. At its apex, Chianti is full bodied but with good acidity, firm tannins, and notes of tart red fruit, dried herbs, fennel, balsamic and tobacco. Chianti Riserva, typically the top bottling of a producer, can benefit handsomely from a decade or two of cellaring.