The magic of Chianti flows persuasively from the bottles of that wine that the world envies. The modern story of "Chianti Classico" begins in the 19th century when Baron Ricasoli codified the "governo del vino" (wine governance).
IThe ancestral connection of these lands with the vine and wine has been confirmed by the recent discovery in a Chianti archaeological site of some twenty-three-century-old seeds of "Vitis Vinifera"; from the late Middle Ages, then, vines became protagonists of agriculture and the economy.
The derivation of the word Chianti, according to a document from 790 from the Abbey of San Bartolomeo in Ripoli, is difficult to identify: it is probably an evolution from the Latin clangor, meaning noise or typical ring in the dense woods resonating with trumpets for noble hunts and animal cries. But there are linguists who trace back to an Etruscan origin of the name and others who consider it of late Germanic derivation from the time of the Lombard occupation. What is certain is that Chianti officially began to be talked about around the seventh century.
A land of great wines, thanks also to the monks who cleared forests and planted vines on the lands surrounding the abbeys and thanks to the farmers themselves who perpetuated their cultivation. The modern story of "Chianti Classico" begins in the nineteenth century with a figure who was the father of current Chianti viticulture and who inspired the production regulations: Baron Bettino Ricasoli. In 1874, he codified the "governo del vino" (traditional Tuscan winemaking system) and defined the proportions of the Chianti blend, attributing a percentage to each of the main grape varieties.
Every season is good to visit Chianti. Spring and autumn are the best periods, those in which the landscape and climate are pleasant and the low season allows for less crowding and more advantageous prices. The countryside blooms and offers all its beauty. In summer, Chianti is the right place to relax and find milder temperatures. In this season and until autumn, all villages and towns come alive with festivals and events linked to traditions, history, and the culture of wine and good food.
Discovering Chianti means looking for new ways to enjoy the journey and landscape, taking unusual routes and getting to know the small capitals of Siena's Chianti: Radda, Gaiole, Castellina, and Castelnuovo Berardenga. Reducing Chianti to just Chianti would be an injustice to its complexity, because if anything, the common denominator of these lands lies in the high meaning of rurality. An aristocratic rurality. And not because the territory is dotted with titled mansions, feudal manors, or because part of the modern nobility (that of show business, business, and intelligentsia) has chosen to live here today, but because it is the excellence of the products that determines this exclusivity. In the end, it is the wine that is the result of Chianti and not vice versa.
Alongside wine, this rural wisdom has first preserved and then relaunched olive oil, recovered the Cinta Senese breed, and a measured pastoralism, which gives excellent pecorino cheeses. Chianti entrusts a piece of its identity to its cuisine. Each dish is the result of culture, which still refers back to the land and the connection that man has established with the environment, preserved perhaps more than elsewhere precisely because it has been lived more than elsewhere.