As you might know, we have just started to sell the wines that we bottled in the beginning of June this year. I decided to make a video to present the Chianti Classico 2019 and the Riserva 2018 because it is really very rare to have two such outstanding vintages in a row.
If we think about the last few years, it is easy to see a certain discontinuity of the excellent vintages:
The wonderful vintage of 2010 was followed by a warm and dry 2011. Subsequently, the elegant 2013 was preceded by a too warm 2012, but 2014 followed with an inordinate amount of summer rains. Likewise, the fantastic vintage of 2016 that celebrated the 300 years of Chianti Classico was preceded by a sweltering 2015 and was then followed by an extremely dry 2017.
The vintages 2018 and 2019 significantly represent two consecutive vintages at Montefioralle that almost touch the heaven of excellence!
The 2018 vintage
The 2018 vintage has a very sentimental and important value for reasons other than the excellent result because it was the year we celebrated our 50th harvest. Mother nature genuinely blessed us here at Montefioralle that year.
The 2018 had a vegetative cycle that started with an early bud break due to higher ha temperatures than average during the months of March and April, whereas May followed with cooler temperatures and more rain. From the middle of June, it started to get warmer but there were severe summer storms in Tuscany, as well as in the Chianti area. We were lucky in this instance because we dodged practically all of these storms as they continued well beyond us.
Many of you have probably already tasted the result of 2018 in the superb Chianti Classico base wine that we released last year; imagine, therefore, how this vintage can shine through in our Chianti Classico Riserva!
The 2019 vintage
We have already written animatedly about this vintage on our blog after the harvest that year: 2019 was a year characterized by a later bud break, with a warm summer but without any peak temperatures and with the right amount of rain, especially toward the beginning of September. During the rest of the month, huge differences in temperature between night and day allowed for the perfect phenolic maturation of the grapes.
This Chianti Classico is as exceptional as the 2018, even if it is still young. My suggestion is to keep the wine for another year and then start opening it from next fall onwards. Thus, you should stock up on the 2019 and in a couple of years, it will give you tremendous satisfaction.
By the way, this label is also of great importance because it represents our first year as organically certified. This does not mean that we were not organic in previous years, but, as you may know, we decided to become certified “organic” to be as transparent as possible regarding the environmental sustainability of our production. After a couple of years, while our winery was under observation by an inspection body, our first bottle was produced with organic certification. This is that first bottle.
Cheers!