Querciabella Palafreno 2021
£98.45
The wine
A fine and poised Merlot with real depth of flavour, offering complex notes of dark plum, black cherry and blueberry layered with violet, graphite, subtle spice and cedar. Supple yet tightly woven, with silky tannins and a long, mineral finish.
Palafreno is varietal Merlot, made only in the best years and in very small quantity. Merlot has a mixed record in Tuscany, since it ripens early and can turn soft and jammy in the heat, but on the cooler limestone-rich sites at Greve and with biodynamic farming it keeps structure and freshness.
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.
