The best new generation Sangiovese: A fresh perspective

Sangiovese, the grape responsible for Brunello, Chianti Classico and a host of other wines, is scorned and applauded in equal measure. With over 55,000ha it’s Italy’s most-planted red variety, taking up around 8% of its total vineyard area, with the enormity of this number suggesting that wherever it is planted, it thrives.

That is a misconception, which is fuelled further by the fact that the variety, on its own or in blends, features in a staggering 112 denominations and 88 IGTs, Italy’s equivalent of Vin de Pays with geographical indication. Sangiovese’s omnipresence has perpetuated the erroneous idea that Sangiovese must be easy to grow and easy to vinify, but many mediocre wines suggest the opposite.

Like no other grape, Sangiovese is extremely sensitive when it comes to site specifics. It demands the best spot on poor, rocky soils, while its growth needs to be tamed in order to produce quality. Demands that were not always recognised or met in the recent past.

In particular, it is Sangiovese’s vigour and the frustratingly variable quality that got it into trouble. The variety is capable of producing lots of large, big bunches if it is left to its own devices. Disastrously, even more generously producing clones were introduced in the past, leading to tart and tannic wines.

The misconception of Sangiovese being a mediocre variety that needs to be improved, or ‘ameliorated’ – as Italian wine law derogatorily and falsely describes the legal addition of other varieties, mostly Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon – ensued. These international interlopers, in combination with the practice of ageing the ensuing blends in barriques, obscured exactly those characteristics that true Sangiovese possesses: vibrancy, elegance and transparency. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, however, powerful and deeply coloured wines were in wide demand.

Changing attitudes

With few exceptions, Sangiovese remained a little-loved grape. But in the last 10 years or so in Italy a wholesale change towards Sangiovese, in opinion as well as style, has begun to manifest itself so strongly, it has become impossible to ignore any longer.

Producers have started to dismiss international varieties in favour of using 100% Sangiovese, or blending it only with indigenous Italian varieties, while bristling at the use of barriques. Intense scrutiny of the variety in the vineyard and investigation in matching the right clones to various soil types, plus a very gentle hand in winemaking revealed a whole different side of Sangiovese.

Notably in Chianti Classico this trend manifested itself strongly, where the capability of Sangiovese to express origin became the focus of a new generation of producers, taking its lead from what were once considered arch-traditionalists and previously dismissed as hopelessly old-fashioned. Once the Super Tuscan formula of internationally styled, concentrated wines began to subside, the true Sangiovese started to emerge.

In Montalcino, where Brunello must be 100% Sangiovese, a similar thing happened. The denomination had been overshadowed by the Brunello scandal around 2008. Ironically, the scandal couldn’t have been timelier, because the debate and soul-searching it triggered has led away from a strict winemaking approach to a renewed focus on the vineyard, while fuelling debates and arguments on what the best terroirs in the denominations really are.

In my opinion, a much more important effect is that since 2008 the region has begun to move away from a dominant style that producers believed the international market demanded, and towards a style that’s centred on the identification of sub-zones. This has resulted in a plethora of styles. A growing trend for single vineyard wines is proof for the fact that a system of sub-zones, rather than singling out one sub-zone over others, is the way forward, even if the region itself is slow to accept this fact.

In search of quality

Exciting developments are also happening in the Romagna region, where Sangiovese has traditionally been used to fill the enormous tanks of the area’s many co-ops, met by some of the lowest prices paid in Italy for a kilo of grapes. Low prices prevented much-needed investments, with only a handful of quality-focused estates left to defend Romagna’s unique terroirs and reputation.

A seismic change has been happening here, too. A collective of producers in Modigliana, in the hills near Faenza, has begun producing wines of elegance and transparency, demonstrating that Romagna Sangiovese DOC is a style all of its own.

In between these broad regional changes are the newcomers and rebels, managing their vineyards organically and using winemaking methods more commonly associated with Pinot Noir: whole bunch fermentation using indigenous yeast, punching down as the main extraction method and ageing their Sangiovese in anything but barrique.

Time and again their wines are rejected by the official control system as ‘untypical’. They are thrown out of the appellation system, such as Chianti Classico, and instead have to reside under the lowly IGT Toscana category.

In actual fact, these wines are some of the best that are currently produced in the whole of Italy, and are often inspired by estates such as Castell’in Villa in Chianti Classico and Biondi-Santi in Montalcino that never succumbed to any fashion or trend.

The RESET tasting

In order to showcase all of the changes that Sangiovese has gone through – in both perception as well as treatment – Jane Hunt MW and I organised a large-scale tasting in London called Sangiovese RESET. Aiming to celebrate the renaissance of the grape and reset its image, the tasting featured 87 of the best producers mastering this great grape variety. The following 30 wines are a tiny selection of that tasting, but they demonstrate the greatness of Sangiovese.

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