2016 Casaloste Chianti Classico DOCG 750 ml

The wines of Giovanni Battista d’Orsi are some of the best-kept secrets in all of Tuscany. His incredible 2016 Casaloste Chianti Classico, however, promises to be the one that gets the word out to wine lovers all over the world.

James Suckling rated it 93 points, calling it “beautiful and linear,” reserving special praise for its “cherry, mineral and fresh-herb character.” Our tasting panel actually got into an argument when half of us were convinced that a wine this accomplished, with this much polished and energetic cherry, plum, anise, and tobacco, couldn’t possibly cost $21.99 per bottle and $19.99 each on a case purchase.

But it does, and we fully expect it to be one of our hits of autumn.

This is a red that simply has everything going for it. It’s grown in the Conca d’Oro, the “Golden Basin” area of Chianti that is home to Wine Access member favorites like Castello di Rampolla, Fontodi, and La Massa, which are regularly snapped up as soon as we send out a missive featuring any of them. And Giovanni is as obsessed with quality as any producer we’ve ever worked with.

In addition to being the winemaker, he is also the owner and enologist, overseeing every last aspect of the process from the vineyard work to the bottling line. He firmly believes, after all, that wine is a living thing, and requires extensive care and attention. Organics are at the heart of his philosophy, and his land has been certified organic since 1994, a time when this style of wine-growing was neither fashionable nor terribly affordable.

But Giovanni is a man of deep convictions, and he felt that working organically was worth it. Those efforts have clearly paid off.

In 2016, his work has reached a new level. This is a vintage that Jancis Robinson said “produced wines with deep colour and impressive fragrance.” Giovanni leveraged those spectacular conditions to craft a wine of fantastic energy and definition that’s also exceptionally polished. The tannins are ripe and resolved, and the wine overall is complex, fresh, and just the slightest bit modern with the addition of 10% Merlot to soften up the edges of this Sangiovese-based red.

In other words, the 2016 Casaloste Chianti Classico is the peak expression of both a legend-in-the-making vintage and a man whose wines are poised to be the next big thing from Tuscany.

With only 26 acres of land, though, demand promises to far outweigh supply. Our advice is to jump on this opportunity to own some of the very best Chianti Classico being made today. It’s not every day that you see a 93-pointer for below $20, much less one produced by a man who has been so crucial to the renaissance of the appellation. This is as good as Chianti Classico gets, and at a price that’s almost as stunning as the wine itself.