Tasting more than 1,500 Italian wines this year, with another 1,500 to go for the rest of the summer, is a fascinating experience and gives you a broad view of wines currently or soon-to-be-released on the market. In this report, I focus on the 400 or so Super Tuscan and

Solaia and Tignanello are the quintessential Super Tuscans. Not without controversy, Piero Antinori created in 1971 Tignanello and a few years later Solaia, setting the precedent for the whole Super Tuscan movement. Tignanello was the first blend in Chianti Classico of autochthonous varietals – sangiovese – with international varietals – cabernet sauvignon; it was

James recently interviewed several esteemed wine traders for his special report for Financial Times on wine investment. One of the wine merchants James interviewed is Patricio de la Fuente Saez, managing director of Hong Kong-based Links Concept.  Regarding wine investment, Patricio believes it’s best to buy wines that could be drunk

Bibi Graetz has been making wine in Tuscany for 13 years. Like a botanist in a remote jungle, searching for that undiscovered gem, Bibi restlessly searches for every possible unexplored patch of old vines in Tuscany. Bibi’s flagship wine Testamatta is a blend of old vineyards he acquired around Tuscany

Giacomo Neri, owner and winemaker of Casanova di Neri, is certain that the quality of the 2010 vintage was dictated by the moderated climate that prevailed throughout the season. As his son and assistant winemaker Giovanni Neri explains, it was a combination of the quantity of rainfall during the spring,

Having blind-tasted what are surely Chianti Classico’s best 80-odd wines, I must admit that I find it hard to note great differences between those labeled Gran Selezione or Riserva. But my wines in the tasting were Gran Selezione.  To be sure, such wines as Castello di Ama’s single-vineyard Chianti Classicos

Great vintages may come about no more than two or three times a decade, yet Italy’s most famous wine region manages to make awe-inspiring wines just about every vintage. This was only further confirmed to me after tasting the current releases this year of the wines now commonly referred to

It’s the finale of our Chianti Classico Diaries. We’ve heard from so much from so many producers from all the nine comunes of the area: What makes their area unique, how this is reflected in their wines, why the consumer needs to understand this. Above all, we hope to have

Of all the comunes of Chianti Classico, the two we’ll meet in episode eight are without a doubt the least known of all: Tavarnelle Val di Pesa and Poggibonsi. Given their relative obscurity, we thought it a good idea to group them together. Most of the land in these two