Chianti, Tenuta San Jacopo (75cl)

An organic Chianti, a Gold Medal winner, rated one of the best value for money wine from the UK Sommelier Association.

Chianti is probably one of the most famous and underrated Italian wine because a good Chianti seems to be difficult to find, and too many wine drinkers associate Chianti to the cheap red wine on a flask that filled supermarket’s shelves and restaurant tables in the 80’ or the cheap, tasteless, almost watery, Chianti available nowadays from supermarkets. Luckily, good Chianti wines exist and they do not come in flask, if they do, stay away, and can be seriously good red wines because not only they are made with the Sangiovese grape, a great grape, but they are also wood aged.

This chianti, made from organically grown manually harvested 100% sangiovese grapes from old vineyards cultivated in the province of Arezzo, making the wine belonging to the Chianti Colli Aretini DOCG denomination, one of the 7 Chianti DOCG’s appellations, is aged in big oak barrels to add structure and longevity to the wine without covering the grape characteristics.

This organic Chianti is a great red wine with a complex bouquet with hints of cherry, violet and spices. Full, fruity, smooth, with soft tannins and a long aftertaste, a beautiful red wine.

At the beginning of the century, three brothers from Milan, Vanni, Carlo and Marco Cattaneo , bought a decadent Tenuta San Jacopo (an 18th century estate) with the idea of bringing it back to its former glory. Their goal was to produce “great Tuscan and Chianti” wines, elegant and refined. They restored the old vines and then planted new ones wherever restoration wasn’t possible and they decided to follow organic cultivation methods. As well as quality wines, the estate also produces a very limited quantity of organic olive oil which they obtain from the olive trees surrounding the vineyards.