Chianti Classico Riservas to Find Right Now

I could not have imagined, 10 years ago, that I would be extolling the virtues of Chianti Classico Riserva. But times have changed and here I am, doing exactly that.

I had long been a huge fan of Chianti Classico. I still am. It’s one of the world’s most undervalued, underappreciated wines. But until recently I did not often enjoy the Riservas, Chianti Classico’s denser, more structured, more expensive sibling.

Too often, it seemed, producers sought to justify the presumed higher status of the Riservas by subjecting the wines to what they saw other expensive wines around the world receiving: aging in small barrels of new French oak. This treatment gave the wines a flamboyant polish and sheen that in my mind overwhelmed the gorgeous purity of the sangiovese grape.

This was not a practice restricted to Tuscany, the home of Chianti Classico. All over the wine world in the 1990s and 2000s, producers imagined that their best wines had to be powerful and oaky. Finesse and subtlety were too often sacrificed for muscle, brawn and ostentation. Wines like these were marked by garish winemaking practices of the cellar rather than the sense of place that comes from the vineyard.

For a long time, my advice was save your money. The less expensive wines, rarely subjected to the same heavy-handed regimen, were often much better.

But in the last decade, producers around the world have throttled back, softening their approach, letting vineyards and wines speak for themselves. The result has been a vast improvement. The greatness of wines like Chianti Classico Riserva, once concealed under layers of makeup, is now apparent. It’s a wonderful thing. I found nine bottles from recent vintages that I highly recommend.