Gran Selezione is certainly becoming more important, with annual production now at two million bottles out of roughly 37 million in total (this may seem small, but it dwarfs Burgundy’s ratio of Grand Cru to total). However, quality remains somewhat mixed, with some bottlings – among them, Monteraponi’s Bragantino, Querciabella’s Gran Selezione and Il Caggio’s Ipsus – sure to be right at home in the international collector’s cellar while others can be acquired for less than some producers’ annate (not that price is the ultimate indicator of quality; more concerning was the number of wines that required re-tasting because of Brettanomyces or other spoilage).

The style of Gran Selezioni is more heterogenous still. This doesn’t seem to be a result of blending. Though new regulations – increasing Sangiovese to at least 90% of the blend and disallowing non-native varieties – won’t go into effect until vintage 2027, many producers have already adopted Sangiovese-heavy blends or gone completely varietal. The top wines, particularly those I tasted during my visits, largely shared a distinct Sangiovese brightness, with sheer, ruby fruit, ebullient aromatics (boosted in many cases by whole berries in the fermenter), tender tannins (often the result of submerged cap fermentation, borrowed from the Piemontese) and moderate alcohol. However, the wines tasted blind at the consorzio were almost uniformly darker – much less ethereal and lacy, in fact, than many 2019 Brunello di Montalcino – while aromatic profiles, oak maturation time and alcohol levels were all over the map.

Is this the impact of site-specificity? Perhaps so, and for each wine I have dug hard to try to find possible environmental factors to explain the style (while acknowledging substantial differences in winemaking between producers). However, it is probably too soon to tell, given how recent a phenomenon site-specific bottling is in the region. Winemaking has generally become lower-touch, with the same broad shift seen across Italy’s top wine regions toward larger oak vats and neutral vessels like concrete and (to a lesser extent) amphorae, theoretically making site distinctions more detectable. The few older wines included (e.g. Vignamaggio Monna Lisa, dating back to 2006), mainly from online tastings of samples sent to me to taste, drive this point home.

The broader impact of the UGAs has been somewhat blunted by the fact that it is only the Gran Selezione wines that can display the UGA names. This has been a source of consternation for some producers who remain opposed to the Gran Selezione category, like Paolo Cianferoni of Caparsa, who calls it a ‘matter of marketing’. He says the emphasis should be on UGAs or even narrower site-specificity, which he has long embraced with his Doccio a Matteo Riserva bottling. Others like Roberto Stucchi Prinetti of Badia a Coltibuono, though more open to the Gran Selezione than before because of the UGA factor (which he nevertheless insists ought to be available to all categories), remain wary, in Stucchi Prinetti’s case because of the 90% Sangiovese requirement. This is a reminder that the much larger and less restrictive Riserva category still includes some absolute gems, particularly from producers who don’t (yet) make Gran Selezione.

Meanwhile, producers like Querciabella, which has been working on single-village bottlings from their range of holdings for over a decade and a half, are very happy with the consorzio’s UGA emphasis and excited to release a new range of Gran Selezioni labelled with UGAs (in this report we present all their Gran Selezioni released to date, though these were not yet UGA-specific). Hopefully as more producers with holdings across multiple UGAs choose to bottle them individually, distinctions between the UGAs – many still not particularly well-defined – will become clearer.

One UGA that is having a well-deserved moment in the spotlight is the former ‘backland’ of Radda, where many of my visits took place this year, including to Caparsa, Castello di Volpaia, Monteraponi, Val delle Corti and Castello di Radda. Though reasonably well-furnished with castles that maintained production here through less propitious times, it is true that – as I discussed with Braganti, Cianferoni and Roberto Bianchi of Val delle Corti – the higher-altitude, cooler slopes of Radda, especially northerly oriented sites, were less favourably viewed until global warming and a concurrent shift in global tastes thrust its elegant, sometimes austere wines into the spotlight. Cianferoni notes that when he took over in the 1980s, even ripening grapes at his estate – which reaches up to 450m asl (not really that high in the context of today’s high-altitude viticulture) – was a substantial challenge. Though he has never stopped labelling his wines 13.5% abv, he admits they used to struggle to reach 13% and now are in fact closer to 13.9%.

On the topic of climate change, the last few years have been a wild ride in Chianti Classico. After the string of excellent vintages from 2019-2021 – all of which are well-represented in this report – 2022 was a year of intense heat and little summer rainfall that maintained its freshness and balance thanks to water reserves and substantial diurnal variation. 2023 was a doozy, with its heat surges and subsequent frost, flooding rains, late-summer hail and, naturally, intense disease pressure making for a seemingly anomalous year, at least until 2024 came along with its similarly vigorous rains. However, even the many organic producers I spoke with, including Braganti, say they now feel more confident about managing these wetter conditions within the confines of organic viticulture, which has become especially widespread in Radda. Fortunately, though production volumes in 2023 will be way down, the fruit that made it to the finish line is apparently of high quality.

More fortunately still, the vintages currently on the market are excellent, especially if you look mainly at the top two thirds of wines. The 2019s at their best are austere, taut with acid and almost withholding, with reserves of burbling energy within. The 2020s are looser, more relaxed and elegant, somewhat reminiscent of 2018 and probably marginally less long-lived than the others. Finally, the 2021s are the wines about which there was the most palpable excitement, with an added layer of concentration, tension and drive even relative to 2019. Thus, though it still certainly pays to seek out better producers, there is doubtless much to be enjoyed in Chianti Classico this year.

Tasting notes and scores from Club Oenologique’s Chianti Classico Report 2024 (featuring only those wines scoring 90 points and above) are available to all registered users of The Collection, the online home of our premium wine and spirits content. To register, click here.