‘Chianti Classico: The Complete Atlas of the UGA Vineyards’ Alessandro Masnaghetti Editore

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

Chianti Classico
The atlas of the vineyards and UGAs
Alessandro Masnaghetti

An extract from Jancis Robinson.

Oenocartographer Alessandro Masnaghetti, who founded and runs Enogea, starting writing about wine during his national service. Walter recounts, in his fascinating 2010 account of Masnaghetti’s story, that one of the first articles he wrote for Luigi Veronelli’s magazine L’Etichetta was about Pieropan’s vineyard La Rocca. It sowed the seed, Walter wrote, for Enogea.

This magnum opus is every bit as Walter says: a stunning work. Large, hardback and written in both Italian and English, it starts with an introduction: to Tuscany, to Chianti Classico in particular (‘referring to Chianti Classico as Chianti … is equivalent to commercial suicide’), vineyard and production stats, wine laws, varieties. He also delves into the origin of Supertuscans, before digging into the real meat and marrow of the book.

The book, as Masnaghetti explains, is different from his Barolo maps book, in part because Chianti Classico has just 11 UGAs (unità geografiche aggiuntive) compared with Barolo’s 170 MGAs (menzioni geografiche aggiuntive, officially registered single vineyards, or crus). And, he adds, ‘although by law they are completely equivalent, in practice they are very different’, explaining that Chianti Classico does not have a culture of crus/climats in the way of Barolo or Burgundy.

So he starts broad, with an overview and an elegant map of the 11 UGAs, the wine styles of each and a vintage report. I particularly liked the infographic depicting the wine styles (see below). One of the key sections is the ‘generalities’ of Chianti Classico territory, which, in six beautifully detailed (and, in Masnaghetti signature style, exquisitely crisp and clear) maps, covers the topography, subregional mean-annual temperature differences and underlying geology. Soil-and-rock terroir nuts will be very happy to know that this chapter goes into the geology and soils in quite some depth.

Thereafter, Masnaghetti explores, and maps, of course, the eight communes of Chianti Classico and then the UGAs (which do not exactly map to the communes) – 238 pages of forensic detail. Each map is three-dimensional, shows the exact location of individual vineyards and includes topography, geology, winery locations and physical features such as roads, rivers and towns. How he goes about the process of mapping is described by Walter in Italy’s vineyards mapped by foot, and it’s clear that the same massive, painstaking process has been undertaken with this book. It is written at a simply astounding level of detail. But it is also deeply thoughtful – caring, even. Which sounds a strange thing to say, but Masnaghetti manages to weave in a sensitive, respectful consideration of history, local customs and tradition, linking the past to the present in a way that makes sense of both. He is also refreshingly objective, standing back from opinions and quality judgements of the vineyards, producers and their wines. He allows the maps to simply bear witness to the terroir.

It’s not just the maps that are a joy to read. Masnaghetti writes beautifully and in a way that I found unexpectedly, charmingly intimate, and very modest. It’s almost as if he’s by your side, chatting to you as he explains how the maps works, what his thinking was behind some of his decisions. About the Pesa Right Bank of Radda UGA, for example, he writes, ‘At the center, as if to emphasise its importance, is the parish church of Santa Maria Novella, whose radius of influence once stretched from Albola to Monterinaldi, leaving me undecided for a time whether to use its name to identify the entire Pesa Right Bank.’ He takes the reader with him, to the ridges, to see the views, to walk the vineyards, using ‘we’ and ‘us’ in a way that is unusually warm and inclusive. He has also achieved that most difficult thing as a writer whose job it is to convey a great number of pretty complex, dry facts – it’s genuinely interesting. It has a narrative. It flows. It must also be acknowledged that Burton Anderson has done a superb job of translating the book into English.

Aside from the maps, which are worth their weight in gold, there are other extremely useful features of the book, such as tables of vineyard statistics, surface data and number of wineries, explanations of labelling and UGA regulations, lists of wineries by UGA, producer location and contact details. Best of all, though, the author has created seven fabulous mapped itineraries, which can be done by car or bike, in order to best explore the UGAs.

All I can do, at this point, is reiterate Walter’s words. It is indeed a stunning work, without parallel – and if no one is buying it for you, buy it for yourself.