Castello di Monsanto Chianti Classico 2022

Castello di Monsanto's place in Chianti Classico history is hard to overstate. The estate was acquired in 1961 as a wedding gift for newlyweds Fabrizio and Giuliana Bianchi, and Fabrizio wasted no time reshaping the region's thinking: in 1962 he cleared and planted a vineyard called Il Poggio specifically to produce Chianti Classico's first-ever single-vineyard wine, and by 1968 he'd made the then-radical decision to eliminate the white grapes Malvasia and Trebbiano from his blends entirely, sticking to Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Colorino alone — years ahead of regulatory change. Today the estate is led by his daughter Laura Bianchi, still farming the same historic hillsides between Florence and Siena, with cellars that include an eighteenth-century tunnel housing an unbroken library of every vintage back to 1962. This entry-level annata is an estate-grown blend of Sangiovese with Canaiolo and Colorino, sourced from a mix of vineyard plots including older vines on yellow sand and galestro soils, fermented in temperature-controlled steel vats before ageing partly in large oak casks and partly in used tonneaux — the same meticulous process as the estate's celebrated Riserva, just with the shorter twelve-month minimum ageing the annata classification requires.

The result captures exactly what one respected critic has called Monsanto's "ballerina power" — wines that are lithe and weightless yet built on a deep, driving core of fruit. Expect bright, primary wild cherry and raspberry, layered with distinct citrus oils and an exotic, savoury edge, all held together by firm, beautifully polished tannins and a subtle underlying salinity drawn from the estate's marine-influenced soils.