2016 Barone Ricasoli Colledila Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 750 ml

When Chianti Classico producers describe the 2016 growing season, they reach for words that normally embarrass them. Once-in-a-generation. Perfect. The consensus among winemakers across the region was as close to unanimous as it gets: this was the vintage they had been waiting for. The wines have since made the case for themselves.

Barone Ricasoli has been making wine at Brolio Castle, in the hills of Gaiole in Chianti, since 1141—the oldest winery in Italy and one of the oldest wine estates in the world. The family’s most consequential figure was Bettino Ricasoli—the Iron Baron, briefly the second Prime Minister of unified Italy—who in 1872 wrote down the formula for Chianti wine and placed Sangiovese at its center. The region has been organized around his vision ever since.

Francesco Ricasoli recovered full control of the estate in 1993, after decades in which production rights had passed out of direct family hands. What followed was quiet and deliberate: soil mapping across 235 hectares of vineyards, a rigorous Sangiovese clonal research program, and a decisive pivot toward wines of place over wines of power.

The Colledilà is the fullest expression of that work. The vineyard is seven hectares of pure Sangiovese on Monte Morello—Alberese, a calcareous clay-limestone soil that is demanding and clarifying in equal measure. At 390 meters above sea level, near the upper limit at which Sangiovese develops real precision, it produces fruit of unusual focus. Only perfect clusters are selected at harvest. The wine ages 18 months in 500-liter tonneaux before release.

The 2016 growing season at Brolio was shaped by late-spring hailstorms and concentrated summer heat that reduced yields naturally, followed by the dramatic diurnal temperature swings—10 to 15 degrees between day and night—that mark Gaiole’s finest harvests. Those conditions are written into this wine.

In the glass, the Colledilà opens with dark plum and cassis, tobacco, dried florals, and traces of spice and warm earth. The tannins are firm but supple, and the acidity is focused and long. A wine built for a serious table, and one that continues to develop in the bottle.