Ricasoli Colledilà Chianti Classico DOCG 2017 (Italy)

Description

• French oak
• Blackberry & orange 
• Full bodied
• Ultra-fine tannins

"The purity of fruit here is stunning with blackberry, blueberry and orange-peel aromas and flavours. Medium-bodied with ultra-fine tannins. Racy and focused with precision and polish that is very impressive for the vintage" James Suckling, 2020

This grape grows on a clayey-limestone soil that is one of the most representative types of Chianti Classico: a very stony soil, rich in calcium carbonate and clay and poor in organic matter. Hand picking and selection of the best grapes in the Colledilà vineyard on September 21st.

This was an atypical year, perhaps unlike any ever registered. Winter was fairly mild and warm. The frost that arrived on 18?20 April, the drought, the extreme heat that lasted for more than two months, all scorched the earth and the grapevines. For this reason, the leaf removal typically carried out before grape harvest was avoided; instead, the grapevines were left “untidy”, only slightly trimmed, to protect the fruit from the rays of the sun. At the end of August and the first ten days of September, rains came and the temperatures dropped drastically, all the way to the seasonal average.

The grapes are destemmed and transferred by gravity into 100-hl stainless steel open tanks and then inoculated with selected yeasts. Fermentation temperature 24-27°C with daily punching and maceration on the skins about 14-16 days. 18 months in 500-litre tonneaus of which 30% new and 70% second passage.