24 Apr 174 tastings between 2021 previews and late releases of the vintages prior to the 2023 Chianti Classico Collection
The 2021 vintage in Chianti Classico was a prelude to the 2022 without the experience that the latter brought to the producers. A difficult vintage to interpret, especially after the exciting and “easy” two-year period 2020-2019. In hindsight, the 2021 would have been a thousandth to work in a more light and crunchy key, avoiding extractions and overripeness, and trying to tone down its intense acidity. With the grapes planted in September at very high values and the sugars rising steeply, it must not have been easy to decide the moment of the harvest but even less the management in the cellar to avoid too important extractions.
In our tastings, there were no shortage of splendid and touching wines, while the rest settled on a respectable average pleasantness but without peaks of exaltation.
The 2020 can instead be defined as a 2019 that didn’t make it. Lapidary as you like, but the judgment on the vintage can only be this obviously: it’s not bad news, on the contrary! It should be remembered (and the tastings have proved it brilliantly) that 2019 is one of the vintages to be consigned to history as one of the best ever, so comparisons are uncomfortable and extremely ungenerous for a vintage, 2020, which in any case in its best expressions it is close to perfection both in terms of type and in the gastronomic perspective at the table.