IMO, Chianti is under-appreciated and stuck in a price ghetto. This makes it a great value. I can usually get excellent BdM at what I consider a fair price and often at a very good price, but not at the QPR of Chianti. I buy both and with both I pick and choose according to my own parameters of style, taste, etc.
There are also IGT Sangiovese like Montevertine. Great wine, not a QPR. I have a bunch that I bought before the recent price run-up. I have a pretty good stock, should last me until I’m done drinking wine.
Nebbiolo is a different grape for different mood/food – I love both Sangiovese and Nebbiolo – I don’t compare them.
John, you probably know that Barolo was terribly underpriced for decades. Especially considering cellar time for the wines before release. I can remember selling many '82 Barolos for $10-$15 back in the late 80s and they were such incredible wines for the money. So today’s prices are more in line for where they should be -
I agree that Chianti is a great QPR. Frankly I think it gives almost any region of the world a strong fight in the $20 area. I drink a ton of it as a daily drinker. Just had another tonight at $19.99 tax incl. with delivery, that would be very hard to beat.
However, I think of BdM starting at higher price points and would not want to put it up against my beloved Chiantis. Rancia is a strong Chianti at $40-45 but otherwise, I would take some of the Bdms I like and can find at $30 over most Chiantis in that area. Hard to see how that is underperforming. In my mind, most Chianti ceases to be a great value above the $25 price point. The competition gets better and Chianti joy seems to plateau.
I notice that no one has brought up the issue of looking at every wine that today could be considered a Chianti. I believe if you included the likes of Flaccianello and Montevertine as a Chianti, then Chianti vs BdM becomes much closer. Absent the heavy hitters, I think Chianti rules at lower price points, but fades as it rises in price to compete directly with BdM. Ymmv.
Since I started this thread, I have been doing some more reading on Brunello. I used to think that it was made with a different grape ariety from Chianti, but it appears that Sangiovese Grosso is just a different clone, or maybe a different group of clones, with the rest being known as Sangiovese Piccolo. However, there seems to be as much disagreement on this issue as agreement. I do not consider Chianti Classico to be substantially similar to Brunello because, to me, they just taste very different. Maybe it’s the terroir, the grapes, adulteration (heaven forbid), local wine making traditions, my own palate. One of these days it will be time to test them against each other bind just to see what happens.
I’m in the camp that finds more mediocre Brunello than great Brunello. I may still decide to buy a couple in the $30 range since I think that’s a good price for what they provide, but anything in the $50+ range seems overpriced for the quality that I’ve seen. Great pizza wines though.
It’s probably just me, but I am always confused when I see people comparing Chianti and Brunello (in terms of anything, including value). To me, even “Chianti” is a very broad concept, given the (again, to me) considerable differences that exist between the different Chianti-this and Chianti-that areas.
Sure, Brunello has had more than its fair share ups and downs, and it takes time, patience and knowledge to separate the wheat from the chaff (not unlike many, if not most, other famous wine areas across the world).
However, I think it is pretty much a matter of historical record that, generally speaking, good Brunello is one of Italy’s very best red wines. The very best ones are (from my perspective) up there with the world’s very best.
As for pricing, again, I don’t really see anything there that strikes me as surprising or counterintuitive. There are some wines at the top that are quite expensive in absolute terms. But there are dozens and dozens of fantastic, complex, ageworthy wines that you can buy in the 30-80 EUR range (I’m talking European retail), if you know your way around a bit.
I think the old ‘grosso/piccolo’ idea has gone away, and has been replaced by the idea that Sangiovese is a variety with a lot of genetic variation within it, like Pinot Noir. One of the most important quality initiatives of the last generation in Chianti Classico was to improve the quality of the vines being planted, as there were apparently a lot of bad, high-yield plantings made in the '70s.
I did hear the older cellar-master of a Vino Nobile producer once describe their blend as containing ‘prugnolo gentile e sangiovese’ as if they were two different varieties…
I’m not clear. Do you attribute that to ignorance or do you think he was attuned to fine distinctions among grapes that botanists would say are different variants of sangiovese?
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. He talked about them as if they were two different varieties, but they aren’t. I am just reading d’Agata’s excellent new book to make sure I’m not spouting nonsense and he emphasizes the very wide variation of vines that are still genetically Sangiovese. He has a lengthy and very useful exposition on this subject.
I posted a separate thread on this, but to echo Oliver’s comment, Ian’s new book has a bull’s eye drawn on the “grape/clone” discussions. In some cases, he seemed to feel that the misnomers in terms of grape terminology literally trace back to long-standing cultural nomenclature.
I forget which grape it was in particular, but in one case I was reading about, even after they chemically proved that two “different” grapes were one and the same, the local producers who made wines using the “second label/name” for that grape refused to consider the possibility (or perhaps better stated, the scientific certainty) that the two grapes in question were in fact the same grape.
Ian has done yeoman’s work here if you like reading about this stuff in very geeky detail .
In the bad old days of Southern Italian winemaking, it was pretty hard to believe that primitivo was really the same as zinfandel. I remember in 1997 when the sommelier at I Trulli served me a wine by the glass that tasted like zin. I guessed primitivo since it was an Italian restaurant and I’d read they were the same grape. But it was the first time I’d had a clean, unoxidized primitivo!
And if you didn’t have the label to help, it would be hard to imagine most New World pinot being the same grape as red Burgundy.
And if you didn’t have the label to help, it would be hard to imagine most New World pinot being the same grape as red Burgundy.<<<<<
True that! I would find it easy to imagine many of them being the same grape as Shiraz, however .
BTW, had din-din last night with a three fellow Board members, and two of the wines we drank were the '88 Monsanto Il Poggio CCR and the '88 Pertimali BdM. At least in this latest side-by-side, the Pertimali was definitely worth a “premium” price vis-a-vis the Monsanto, as it was clearly younger, more vibrant - in short, there was more “there” there .
We were in the Brunello area last year! I wouldn’t call it a large area. I don’t really compare Barolo with Brunello as they are so different, and hit different spots on my tasting spectrum. I do distinguish between older and newer style Brunello, primarily because older style wines tend to age better while newer style wines can and should be drunk earlier. Generally, I think Barolo and Brunello producers as equally variable in quality and price: both with some great value entries, some unquestionable reliable and superior makers, and some being duds along the way! I tend to age both varietals to varying degrees. Barolo I age for a longer period generally. I love both wine types for very different reasons!
But, we definitely don’t consider Brunello an inferior region at this house!
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