Wine & Spirits - June 2018 - 27

Ask a roomful of bright young sommeliers to name a red wine that's value driven, food
friendly and terroir expressive: The likely answer is Beaujolais, which overcame its reputation as cheap swill and is now compulsory on any serious wine list. You almost certainly
would not hear Chianti, a name that was synonymous with quality Italian wine for centuries
but has fallen off the radar in recent years. That's changing: A few key tastemakers have
taken notice of the growing number of value-driven, terroir-expressive Chianti Classicos
now coming into the market. Their voices, along with a pair of very good vintages about to
hit our shores, might just be enough to push Chianti Classico back onto the lists of savvy
wine buyers.
"The 1970s were a very dark time for Tuscany," says
Bobby Stuckey, MS, co-owner of Frasca Food and
Wine, in Boulder, Colorado, and the newly opened
Tavernetta, in Denver. He remembers going to a
Chianti Classico seminar around 1993 and, he says,
"questioning whether sangiovese was even a noble
variety." Stuckey is among those who believe Chianti Classico has moved beyond its dark days and
deserves another look. He never fully lost interest in
the wines, and began refocusing on Chianti Classico
in the last ten years as he started seeing great wines
for the price. He recalls asking job applicants about
Chianti Classico and getting blank stares. "Young
buyers just aren't tasting Chianti Classico," Stuckey
finds. "It's mind numbing to me, because there's so
much great wine. There's a renaissance happening.
Everything we pretend to care about is there. The
wine team at Frasca jokes about it all the time," he
says, "how every somm in Brooklyn would rather
drink twenty-seven fucked-up bottles of Beaujolais
than a Chianti Classico. It's not the cool-kid juice,
but when I talk to experienced somms like Richard
Betts, [MS], we wonder, how are all these people
missing this?"
David Rosoff, who ran the Mozza group of restaurants before opening his own Triple Beam Pizza in
Los Angeles earlier this year, has been buying wines
for Italian restaurants since the early 1990s. "My
body craves good sangiovese, but I had a really neg-

ative view of Chianti Classico for a time," he admits.
"There were so many dark years when everyone was
tampering with the wines, putting international varieties in the bottle, messing around in the winery to
make it taste like anything but sangiovese."
Rosoff is another who thinks Chianti Classico is
ripe for a renaissance. His interest was rekindled in
the last few years over a series of visits to the region,
where he noticed more producers working organically and making pure sangiovese wines or using
other indigenous varieties in their blends rather
than cabernet or merlot. He was blown away by the
number of high-quality wines. "Somehow, in my old
age, I've come back to the classics," Rosoff says. "I'm
interested in previously prestigious regions that have
fallen on hard times. We saw this happen a few years
ago with Beaujolais, and now it's starting to happen with Chianti Classico. It's really exciting." Like
Stuckey, though, Rosoff isn't seeing those great wines
making their way onto American wine lists, at least
not yet. Perhaps that's because it requires a bit of convincing for customers who harbor a negative image
of the wines. "Young somms aren't buying Chianti
Classico," he says, "so you don't see it on as many
wine lists as you should. You can put a really good
Chianti Classico on your list at $40 or $50 and make
lots of people happy, but you have to convince most
people to drink it. You can do that if you're hands-on
and your staff is motivated and trained."

"It's not the coolkid juice, but when I
talk to experienced
somms like Richard
Betts, we wonder,
how are all these
people missing this?"
-Bobby Stuckey, MS

"Somehow, in my old
age, I've come back
to the classics."
-David Rosoff

WINE & SPIRITS

JUNE 2018

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