Chianti Classico 2001 Riserva Rancia, Fattoria di Felsina
There are many delicious wines in my recent tasting notes on more than 50 2001 Tuscan reds detailed on purple pages, and all of the best buys were Chianti Classicos, some of them not even Riservas, rather than the much more expensive top IGTs. These wines are also of course much more Tuscan in character than many of the so-called Supertuscans and many of them I fell are just as good.
The range of international prices and availability revealed on winesearcher.com shows that prices for these wines can vary considerably from country to country, suggesting that different importers may be taking very different margins. Italy is obviously the best place to buy these wines but Germany also seems to offer some of the best prices.
Overall the best buy seems to me to be the admirable Felsina’s special bottling Chianti Classico 2001 Riserva Rancia, Fattoria di Felsina which can be found for as little as 18 euros (£12) in Italy, Switzerland and Germany and from $26.99 (£14.75) in the US from K&L of San Francisco. In the UK however, the best price I can find is around £25 a bottle from Noel Young or everywine.co.uk (from whom you have to buy at least six bottles). find this wine
But this is a lovely wine, pure Sangiovese, already delicious but it should be worth keeping for another eight or nine years too. This seems to me to have everything: a lively, truly refreshing, fully ripe but not overdone expression of place and vintage. Just pure top quality Tuscan Sangiovese. Owner Giuseppe Mazzocolin has continued to upgrade this estate at Castelnuovo Berardenga in the far south east corner of black rooster land, replanting it with top quality plants in the late 1990s according to Nicolas Belfrage’s Brunello to Zibibbo where he describes Riserva Rancia as “surely one of the greatest Sangioveses in absolute, having a personality and equilibrium all its own, earthy yet elegant, complex yet fine. And it’s Chianti Classico! – one of the very first to match Montalcino in expressing the full potential of Tuscany’s very own grape variety.
Price-conscious Britons may be better advised to head for the much more youthful Chianti Classico 2001 Castello di Fonterutoli of Castellina in Chianti whose regular (not the special, if confusing, ‘Castello’ bottling) I scored 17.5 in my tasting notes as opposed to the 18 points I gave the Felsina wine. Here’s my note in full:
Chianti Classico 2001 Castello di Fonterutoli 17.5 Drink 2008-14
Sangiovese 90%, Cabernet Sauvignon 10%
16 months in barriques partly new, 6 months in bottle
13.5%
Deep crimson. Fresh undergrowth aromas. Lively acidity and very intense fruitiness. Still quite youthful and certainly vigorous. Lots of unevolved ripeness.
It’s even easier to find internationally than the Felsina wine but is much less expensive in the UK: from £13.50 from Villeneuve of Scotland, a bit more from Swig. In Germany it retails from 15.40 euros (£10.41) while in the US it costs from $25 (£13.66) from Downbeach Liquors in New Jersey.
Or, arguably an even better buy in the UK, is Chianti Classico 2001 Pieve di Spaltenna from Gaiole that Oddbins are selling at £8.49 which you can happily drink now and is full of health, fruit and life even if it doesn’t seem to me to have the ageing potential of the (superior) Felsina and Fonterutoli wines. find this wine
There is no doubt that some first class wines are now being made under the simple Chianti Classico appellation and, even though prices are higher than some of us remember, the wine quality is definitively higher too.
