The 2016 Chianti Riserva Caparsino is a total knock-out !
“Chiesamonti” is a 1.3-hectare parcel adjacent to the town of San Felice in Castelnuovo Berardenga, with a stonier soil profile and a lower clay content than Giovanna’s home turf. The vines, now over a decade old, used to be blended into “Cinque” in their younger years, but she now feels they are ready for prime time, and this wine—bottled on its own for the first time in 2018—provides a fascinating counterpoint to “Le Trame”: silkier, higher-toned, and overall prettier, with a more blatant mineral underpinning and less sumptuously fleshy fruit. It spends two years in Stockinger barrels, just like its sister wine, and it comprises nearly entirely Sangiovese, with just a touch of Canaiolo.
The “second wine” of the estate, sold only at the cellar since 1990 but now made from a newly acquired parcel with very rocky limestone soils in Castelnuovo Berardenga just outside the Chianti Classico zone. Giovanna supplements it with certain vats of the first wine, Le Trame, that don’t make the cut, often a significant proportion. Aged for one year in wood vats (5-30 hl) and bottled in the spring. The cuvée name refers to several numerlogical coincidences, including the five grapes of the estate (Sangiovese, Caniolo, Colorino, Mammolo, Fogliatonda), the five leaves and flowers a grape vine has per bunch, and their home addres
Saturated ruby. Highly perfumed aromas of ripe dark berries, cherry, olive and pungent flowers are sharpened by a suggestion of black pepper. Supple and appealingly sweet, offering concentrated black raspberry, cherry-cola and violet pastille flavors a...
The 2021 Chiesamonti is a potent, full-bodied wine that is going to need time to unwind. Herbs, wildflowers, spice, leather and menthol build in this backward, potent red from Le Boncie. There’s plenty of stuffing and textural intensity in this deep, r...