Querciabella Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Greve 2021
£132.95
The Wine Depot is rated 5.0 on Google from 13 customer reviews
The wine
Powerful and expressive, the Greve bottling bursts with blue and purple fruit, lavender, eucalyptus and dark spice, with menthol and liquorice beneath. Layered and sumptuous yet strikingly fresh, it closes on clean mineral notes and a long, chewy finish that promises plenty more with time.
This is Querciabella's home ground: south and south-west facing slopes in Ruffoli, above Greve in Chianti, climbing to 550 metres on poor, rocky galestro and sandstone. The estate studied these vineyards parcel by parcel for more than a decade, and in 2021 released the Greve alongside Radda and SA-LA to show how each village shapes its Sangiovese. Only around 2,600 bottles were made. Rated 97 points by both Antonio Galloni and James Suckling.
The producer
Querciabella
View all Querciabella winesQuerciabella was founded at Greve in Chianti in 1974 by Giuseppe Castiglioni and is now run by his son Sebastiano. It is among the most rigorous estates in Tuscany, and its distinction is as much philosophical as viticultural.
The vineyards have been farmed organically since 1988 and biodynamically since 2000, which put the estate decades ahead of most of the region. More unusually, Querciabella is entirely vegan: no animal products are used in the vineyard or the cellar, so the biodynamic preparations that normally rely on animal materials are replaced with plant-based alternatives, and no fining agents of animal origin are used. Very few serious estates anywhere have committed to that.
Holdings run to around 100 hectares across Chianti Classico and the Maremma. Batar, the white, was among the first Tuscan wines to take Chardonnay and Pinot Bianco seriously; Camartina was one of the original Supertuscans; and the Chianti Classico wines are made from Sangiovese alone, without the softening partners the appellation permits.
