Chianti Classico, its history and its oddities with authors Bill Nesto MW and Frances di Savino

Looking Into Wine

Chianti over centuries had become the equivalent of Italian red wine and grew to be a style rather than a wine that represented a place.
The key producers in the Chianti Classico region were aristocrat Florentine families with interestingly up to the Second World War, a run their estates with a system known as sharecropping. Landowners allowed farmers the use of the land in return for half of the production, which resulted in little incentive to improve quality.
Central Tuscany saw the very first attempt to define a wine production area legally by Grand Duke Cosimo III de ’Medici in 1716, with the boundaries outlined and criminal penalties on any merchant or customer buying wines falsely claiming to be from these areas. This law was never really used, though it was intended to protect the good reputations of these wines and to prevent fraud.
The creation of Sassicaia in 1968 and Tignanello in 1971 inspired the category of Super Tuscans and led to similar wines produced in the 1980s in the Chianti Classico region. Chianti Classico became an autonomous DOCG in 1996. In other words, it is no longer a sub-zone of Chianti.
My guests today are Frances Di Savino and Bill Nesto MW co-authors of ‘Chianti Classico: The Search for Tuscany’s Noblest Wine.’ With which we explore the history of Chianti Classico, how those decisions tarnished the images of Chianti and what the contemporary producers are looking to change that.
Bill is a Master of Wine who teaches in two colleges at Boston University: Metropolitan College, Fran is a corporate attorney who has a background in medieval and Renaissance studies and is Bill’s partner in life and on the wine road
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