During Vinitaly we went to the Principe Corsini stand, winemaker we have already talked about, telling the story of Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Zac vertical. This is an ancient winery in Chianti Classico, located in San Casciano Val di Pesa with Villa Le Corti, extended for 230 hectares of which 50 are vineyards, owned by the family since 1363. The winery is also present in Maremma called Tenuta Marsiliana.
This time we talk about the Chianti Classico Don Tommaso 2000 tasting, a magnum, an over twenty years old wine that we really appreciated.
The grapes come from the vineyard located in Villa Le Corti, extended for 50 hectares, 47 of which are planted with Sangiovese. The aspect is south at an average altitude of 250 metres above sea level. The training system is spurred cordon with a planting density exceeding 5,000 vines per hectare. In 2000 the vineyard was still quite young, with an average age of the vines of 10 years.
The 2000 vintage has been very good, even if the 1999 and 2001 vintages were considered better by critics. The winter, was generally mild, followed by frequent spring rains with rising temperatures that allowed an excellent flowering. The summer heat helped the grapes to develop a thick skins and, despite the thunderstorms in September, the ripening was slightly earlier with a high sugar concentration. The grapes for the production of Don Tommaso have always been a selection of the best available, The wine is predominantly Sangiovese, with a part of Merlot (about 15%).
In the winery, the fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks and lasts 18 days for Sangiovese and 16 for Merlot. A third of the wine was stored for 16 months in new barriques, with the remaining part in second fill barrique. It was aged for over a year in the bottle, in the historic cellar of the seventeenth century. Let us now move on to wine tasting
Chianti Classico Don Tommaso 2000
Powerful and deep but at the same time a refined and soft wine, firmly linked to the area of production. The wine is garnet with an orange shade on the rim of the glass, a sign of the age of the sample tasted. On the nose, it is an important and complex wine. We immediately detect tertiary hints of sweet tobacco, chocolate, licorice root, dark spices, mushroom, then dried violet and reminiscence of plum and black cherry jam. In the mouth, it is characterised by a great softness and a surprising freshness, the last one very well noticeable despite the 22 years of life of this wine. The finish is very long with licorice and balsamic notes.
An exciting wine that goes perfectly with stewed meat, such as beef, lamb or game (roe deer), garnished with important spices, such as cloves. It could also be paired with mature cheeses. This is a wine intended to evolve again.
