Monsanto Chianti Classico 2016

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

This wine is born from a selection of grapes coming from the vineyards which are considered to be the most suitable for ageing in large 50hl barrels. Composed of 90% Sangiovese and 10% Canaiolo and Colorino, it is vinified in steel for about 18 days. The maturing lasts 12 months in 50 hl barrels of Slavonia oak. Finally, it spends the last three-month period of ageing in glass.

About Monsanto

Aldo Bianchi, a native of San Gimignano, left Tuscany before the Second World War to seek fortune in the North of Italy. In 1960, he came back to the area for a wedding and was enchanted by the view from the terrace of Castello di Monsanto: all the Val d’Elsa with the inimitable backdrop of the Towers of San Gimignano. It was love at first sight which made him buy the property within a few months. But if Aldo was bewitched by the landscape, Fabrizio, his son, immediately fell in love with the wines he found in the cellar. Thanks to a passion for wine handed down to him by his grandmother, who came from Piedmont, and to an innate entrepreneurial spirit, Fabrizio, together with the untiring help of his wife Giuliana, started to plant new vineyards and convert the numerous farmhouses….and an incredible story of love, passion and joy for wine and everything concerned with it, starts from here.

In 1962, for the first time within the area of the Chianti Classico Denomination, Fabrizio vinified the grapes from the Il Poggio vineyard: the First Chianti Classico Cru was born.

In 1968, he decided to eliminate the white grapes from the Poggio blend (Trebbiano and Malvasia), a compulsory requirement for the Specifications : a clear and net message to try and make it understood that the real richness of this land, to which the maximum attention had to be given, had to be the Sangiovese.

In the same year, much ahead of his times, he also eliminated the grape-stalk fermentation and the use, very much followed then, of the “Governo alla Toscana” (a refermentation technique adding grapes harvested later) in order to produce a wine of major complexity and balance suitable for a long ageing.Always the more convinced in the value of Sangiovese, in 1974, he created, from the Scanni vineyard, planted in 1968, the Fabrizio Bianchi Sangioveto – then labelled as Sangioveto Grosso – a table wine exclusively from Sangiovese grapes, which triggered off the enhancement of this vine in Tuscany.

Where in the World is Castello di Monsanto?

Located high in the hills of Barberino Val d’Elsa in Chianti Classico, the splendid villa of Monsanto dominates the valley below.  Monsanto (“my saint”) was named in honor of Saint Ruffiniano, who died here in 998 B.C., along with 150 other people involved in a battle.