Fèlsina

The Free Bacchus Story

Fèlsina sits at the bottom right-hand corner of Chianti Classico, at Castelnuovo Berardenga, where the hills run out into the Crete Senesi. It is the warmest and driest end of the zone and also, oddly, one of the latest to ripen, because the nights turn cold early. Sangiovese picked there tends to keep its acidity and its edges rather than going soft.

The wine the house is known for is a lesson in what a label does not tell you. Fontalloro is 100% Sangiovese from vineyards that straddle a boundary: the upper parcels lie inside Chianti Classico, the lower ones fall into Chianti Colli Senesi, between about 407 and 330 metres. Because the fruit crosses an appellation line, the wine cannot carry either DOCG. It is bottled as Toscana IGT — a humbler name on the label, chosen so the wine could stay whole rather than be split in two.

Fèlsina does not ask anyone to take its organic conversion on trust. It publishes the date: Fèlsina termina il periodo di conversione ad agricoltura biologica in data 07/03/2015, come da certificazione effettuata da ICEA — the conversion ended on 7 March 2015, certified by ICEA, one of Italy's accredited bodies. A dated sentence on a producer's own website is worth more than any number of logos on a back label, and it is a good deal rarer than it ought to be.

For anyone who has only met Sangiovese as supermarket Chianti, this is the other end of it. The grape is high in acid and firm in tannin and it does not flatter you; what it gives instead is sour cherry, dried herbs and a dusty grip that makes food taste better than it did on its own. Fontalloro is the concentrated version, built to sit for a decade.