![]() As an 80-year-old regular at Fabrizio’s bar succinctly puts it, “We didn’t have a pot to piss in”. Now the Chianti hills have 5-star hotels, charming bed and breakfasts, superb wineries and amazing restaurants, but once they were desperately poor. Chianti was cheap and cheerful and had a certain folkloristic appeal, but was not something you’d associate with high quality. ![]() If you’re from outside Italy you’ll probably remember Chianti in its classic ‘fiasco’, the squat, straw covered bottle, on the chequered table cloth of Toni’s Pizzeria somewhere, possibly flaunting a candle dripping lurid multi-coloured wax. Over the next hour and a half he offers engaging insights into why Chianti Classico is now so widely appreciated worldwide. Rules and regulations might sound dry, but Fabrizio makes them anything but. “I don’t do the classic wine tasting with a focus on the wine’s organoleptic properties, although of course that’s a part of it, I encourage people to start drinking right away and enjoy the wines I present while I talk about the rules and regulations of wine making in Chianti”. A local with a passion for wine, motorbikes and fast cars, he offers fascinating wine tastings with a difference. Fabrizio Ferrucci runs the town’s Bar Dante and is the owner of Enoteca Toscana. To this day he reigns supreme on the neck of Chianti Classico bottles.īut back to Chianti in 2016, to the charming medieval town of Radda, at the heart of the Chianti Classico wine region. Evidently when seeking a symbol that represented Chianti, the Florentines chose the black rooster to prove to the rest of the world how smart they were (or in the opinion of the Siennese, what a bunch of cheats they were). Thus almost all of Chianti fell into the hands of the Florentines long before the fall of Siena in 1555. The Sienese rider mounted his horse and set out…only to meet his Florentine rival shortly afterwards, not far from his own city gates, near Fonterutoli. Meanwhile back in Siena, the lovely white rooster, who’d probably had a heavy night and a big dinner, opened his eyes lazily several hours later to the light of dawn with a languid “cock a doodle doo’”. The poor, half-crazed bird on seeing a glimmer of light began to crow like a thing possessed. On the much-awaited day of the race, still a long time before dawn, someone in Florence deliberately passed the rooster’s coop with a candle. They half starved it, sleep deprived it and generally neglected it. The Florentines, on the other hand, chose a manky old black rooster and treated it accordingly. They fed it, petted it and generally spoilt it rotten. To fulfil the important role of chief rooster, the people of Siena chose a beautiful specimen, a white one. This sounds pretty fair, but if we tell the story from a Sienese perspective, things didn’t quite go according to plan. Territorial boundaries would be established once and for all where the two riders met. Each city would choose its best rider and fastest horse and, at dawn, when the rooster crowed, each would ride from their respective cities to cover as much ground as they could. After much bloodshed, the warring factions decided on a novel way to put an end to the strife. ![]() This feathery little fellow was the symbol found on the shield of soldiers in the Chianti League when they went into battle and to find out why he’s there we have to go back to the Middle Ages, when the area was a theatre of bitter conflict between the republics of Siena and Florence. This trademark was the famous black rooster. This didn’t solve counterfeiting definitively, however…by the early 20th century demand for Chianti outstripped supply and wine fraud was on a roll once more (we’re not only creative, we’re determined!) So, in order to tighten up controls and safeguard their beloved product, wine makers founded a Consortium for the protection of Chianti wine and its trademark. To combat this and to put a ‘mark’ on the local wine trade, in 1716 (on 7th July to be precise) the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III of the Medici Family, established a ‘Congregation (Association) of Wines and followed this on 25th September with a document setting the boundaries of production areas and very strict standards for the trade of all types of wine. Italians have always been pretty creative so it should be no surprise to learn that counterfeit wine production was in full swing by the early 18th century. However, as regards what we now know as Chianti Classico, it all started 300 years ago.ġ716 – 2016 – the 300th Anniversary of Chianti Classico But why only 300 years? Surely Chianti wine is as old as the region’s hills? After, all viticulture in Tuscany can be dated back to Etruscan settlements in the 8th century B.C. This year Chianti celebrates its 300th birthday.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |