Rocca di Montegrossi Vin Santo del Chianti Classico 2005
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2006-
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Robert
Rocca di Montegrossi is located in the heart of Chianti Classico – just outside Monti in Chianti, about 7 kilometres from Gaiole. Marco Ricasoli-Firidolfi, is a descendant of the historic winemaking family that can be credited with having put Chianti on the map of the world’s best wines. The winery, whose restoration and modernization were completed in 2000, is located near the Romanesque Church of San Marcellino.
Marco Ricasoli-Firidolfi’s passion for vineyards and fieldwork drives his entrepreneurial spirit. Indeed together with consultant agronomist Dr. Stefano Dini, Marco personally oversees all the operations in the vineyards; his goal is to reach the perfect balance between growth and production through daily care of the vines, from short pruning to reduced carefully reasoned fertilization, from the planting of ground cover to the various kinds of green pruning, including bunch thinning, crown pruning, and defoliation a few weeks prior to the harvest. At Rocca di Montegrossi harvest is manual, into small baskets and is carried out in three phases to guarantee that the grapes are selected and picked only when they are perfectly ripe.
Rocca di Montegrossi's cellars have been designed to allow Marco Ricasoli-Firidolfi and Attilio Pagli, the consulting enologist, to handle the grapes from the estate's vineyards in the best possible, ecosustainable manner. In keeping with the organic cultivation of the vineyards, the cellars are environmentally friendly; some of the energy necessary to run them is produced by solar panels on the roof, while the remainder is exclusively from renewable sources (per the RECS International certification).
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.
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.