Read more: The Chianti Classico Report 2024

However, as many a Radda producer will tell you, whether from the picturesque embrace of an 11^th century loggia, or the equally picturesque disarray of a ramshackle casa colonica, it was not always so. Through the end of the 20^th century the once-proud leader of the medieval Lega del Chianti had devolved into something of a rural backwater. In his Atlas of Chianti Classico and its UGAs, mapping expert Alessandro Masnaghetti describes the hollowing out of Radda during the rural exodus of the 1960s, worse even than in its neighbouring communes. The collapse of mezzadria – the traditional sharecropping system – and relative dearth of noble Florentine or Sienese families here who might invest in their home commune compounded the hardships of Radda’s inhabitants (wonderfully captured in 1985’s ‘Veglie a Porcignano’ by Professor Reginaldo Cianferoni, father of Caparsa’s Paolo Cianferoni and originally of mezzadro stock).

The natural conditions were far from favourable: isolated, steeply terraced and densely forested with punishing soils and a thermically-challenged microclimate that produced tart, austere wines of an unfashionably pallid hue. Telling of his family’s arrival here in the 1970s, Roberto Bianchi of Val delle Corti describes a Radda on the verge of returning to nature, with only a few large producers still active on its slopes.

However, out of despair blossomed opportunity, with an opening created for what are now some of the commune’s most vaunted estates: Montevertine, Val delle Corti, Caparsa, Monteraponi and Brancaia. Since the turn of the century, shifts in both climate and consumer tastes have made the once-depopulated subzone into a veritable hotspot. Meanwhile, the large, historical estates were purchased in the middle and late 20^th century: Castello di Volpaia by the entrepreneurial Mascheroni-Stianti family and Albola by the winemaking Zonin family of Veneto, both of whom invested heavily in their estates, raising the international profile of the area.

What is the secret? Altitude – the factor often considered key to Radda’s ‘brand identity’ – may be less important than many believe, according to Masnaghetti. He notes instead the relative uniformity of the cool climate here thanks to the nearby Monti del Chianti and cooling forestlands. Meanwhile the tight clustering of vineyards in only a few areas along the banks of the Pesa River and surrounding the township of Radda has helped create a consistent style, largely shared by the few isolated outposts to the north and south (e.g. Monteraponi, whose forest-encircled vineyards soar up to 570m above sea level). Because so many of the producers born of Radda’s renaissance are small- and medium-sized concerns, many always used exclusively Radda-grown grapes instead of practicing traditional inter-regional blending. Many were also early adopters of single-vineyard bottling, helping cement a clear Radda identity even before UGA labelling made it trendy.

Many are practicing or certified organic, and the level of care in the vineyards, unruly as some at first appear, is palpable. Cianferoni at Caparsa is a tinkerer of training systems; especially evocative are his ‘hippy’ vines, where the curtains of shoots flowing off high-standing trunks give the vineyard the aspect of a swaying crowd at Woodstock. Maurizio Castelli, one-time consulting enologist at icons like Badia a Coltibuono, Col d’Orcia, Le Ragnaie and Mastrojanni, and currently enologist at Castello di Radda, touts the work of their Piemontese viticulturalist Marco Mascarello, who tends even the 40ha of the Castello as he might manage a smallholding, with careful manual labour.

There is a similar spirit of experimentation and boundary-pushing in Radda’s winemaking, starting with the push toward pure Sangiovese in the 1960s and ‘70s, with Le Pergole Torte and Volpaia’s Coltassala among the first in the region. The experiments haven’t stopped: much closer to the present day, Bianchi cites Sean O’Callaghan at Carleone as inspiration for what he calls a ‘Piemontesina’ – a month’s long anaerobic post-fermentation maceration with some whole berries that softens both acidity and tannins, used as part of the blend. The rebellion continues in other ways too, with producers like Val delle Corti and Caparsa refraining from producing a Gran Selezione, even though (as the rules stand now) they are forbidden from putting the Radda UGA on the labels of their (Gran Selezione-level) Riservas. The iconic Montevertine, meanwhile, remains outside the Chianti Classico denomination entirely.

Nevertheless, the producers here work unusually well together, exemplified by the Vignaioli di Radda’s annual blend. Each of the 24 members contributes a few litres, which are then bottled in magnum and ultimately served at their annual celebration. Roberto Bianchi, president of the Vignaioli, describes the wine as ‘fresh’ and ‘authentic’ – terms that perhaps capture the current moment in Radda as well as anything.