Chianti Colli Senesi with Bottle Age
If you spend enough time around Italian wine, eventually you realize that not all Chianti is created equal. And this is something that wine nerds have been really digging into the last few years. The famous villages get the headlines. Classico gets the prestige. Brunello (technically Chianti if it wants to be) gets the collectors. But tucked just south of all that is the Colli Senesi zone, surrounding Siena itself, where some of Tuscany's best values quietly live year after year.
Most wine lovers know Panizzi for Vernaccia di San Gimignano. They're one of the estates largely responsible for proving that Vernaccia could be more than a simple local white wine. But their vineyards are planted not just to Vernaccia, but to Sangiovese as well, and the same meticulous farming and winemaking that have made their whites so successful carries directly into this bottling.
The 2020 vintage was a strong one for Tuscany, delivering wines with ripe fruit, excellent balance, and enough structure to age gracefully without sacrificing immediate drinkability. This bottling captures everything that makes Sangiovese such a beloved grape: bright cherry fruit, hints of dried herbs, a touch of earth, and that signature savory edge that keeps you reaching for another sip.
I really need a few years of bottle age on my Sangio from Colli Senesi to add that herby quality, with flavors of cured meats and charred tomatoes. This is the ‘everything pizza’ character that I love out of some of the more rustic styles of Chianti. Add in a touch of Merlot to the blend for robust, medium-plus tannins and we have a complete wine from front to back. Sagemandoregano, red cherries and tomatoes for fruit, all being pulled together with the cured meat that my favorite Chianti exhibits at this point in their life. We’ve done the aging for you, since most Chianti out right now are 2024 or so. Buy it up, take advantage of the time taken to deliver a ready-to-drink, great value that is hard to resist.
I often wish that some of these wines still came in a wicker basket; I just think that it would be fun in a somewhat kitschy way. As long as the juice is good, as it is here.
Sometimes the best bottles aren't the famous ones. They're the ones you find yourself opening again and again.
