Really? Chianti's Top Tier Hits its Stride | Wine-Searcher News & Features
Have you had it? While Suckling is more than prone to severe point inflation, IMO, the Gran Selezione designation has certainly resulted in some stunning Chiantis that are World Class
No, I haven’t. Seems to be available from a handful of NE retailers. Zachy’s increased the price of the 2018 by $40 over the 2017.
Ricasoli is the original Chianti estate. The Barone was the one who codified the production of the wine. Definitely in the upper tier of Chianti Classico.
Meanwhile some guy on CT thought so well of it that he rated it 88 points. The truth is probably closer to that guy’s score than Suckling’s.
Anyone buying wine from James Suckling’s ratings is clueless although Total Wine business seems to be booming!
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That user also gave the 2016 Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona Brunello di Montalcino Pianrosso a whopping 90 points (CT average of 94.6 over 15 reviews). I’m curious to try some Gran Selezione myself. Brunello is bound by geographical limits and we know there are excellent wines in the Chianti region outside Brunello - so having a level above CCR could reward producers who look to improve the quality of the wines. As we all know Chianti Classico suffers greatly from the image problem of cheap and thin wines. If the GS labelling incentives better farming and more thoughtful winemaking then in time we could be looking at Gran Selezione’ wines that do merit close to 100 points.
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Very thoughtful post. Any idea how the legal requirements differ between the Riservas and the Gran Selezione?
From what I can gather: all grapes used must be estate grown (which apparently isn’t the case for CCR), the wines require an additional gram of dry extract (from 25g/l to 26g/l), additional 6 months of aging (in bottle or barrel) and .5% more ABV (from 12.5% to 13%).
So not much difference from CCR other than estate grown requirements - which is why the new category has earned a good deal of criticism. (Gran Selezione – emperor's new clothes? | JancisRobinson.com). Nonetheless - who knows? Some wine writers call it a marketing gimmick - but so are a lot of other labeling and ranking efforts. What in may in effect do is allow for producers to price above the CCR bandwidth in a way that allows higher quality wines to pencil out. The requirements don’t seem to have much teeth, but if estate grown producers immediately look to put their best wines forward as Gran Selezione then isn’t that the point?
Though I’m snipping it down to these parts, everything you said is very spot on imo.
I think the biggest influence the GS designation will have is that producers can put out their best plots/barrels as GS, produce much better wines, and get better prices. The irony is that Gran Seleziones are being priced higher than Brunellos and while I’m a big believer in the quality increase of GS, I really don’t think they (as a whole) are that much better than the myriad of Brunello that is available between $50-100
To me, the issue of consumers leaning too much on GS as proof of quality is that mega producers like Ruffino now bottle up 30k+ cases of Ducale Oro as Gran Selezione. Now I get that the typical consumer of that might not pay up for more words on the label, but it seems to cheapen the whole effort.
I can see why estates who can make quality wine might just stick with whatever branded, fantasy name they have built over the years, rather than let a commercial venture trade off their work if they sell under GS DOCg