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White in red banned
The 2006 vintage of Chianti Classico brings us wine lovers something to celebrate – and not just that so many of the wines taste good. This is the first year that white wine grapes have been outlawed from this, the quintessential wine of Tuscany, the land of olives, vines, cypresses and, at this time of year, thousands of holidaymakers.
Putting white wine grapes in red wine is not quite as bizarre as it sounds. In some cases there are sound reasons for including a few green-skinned grapes along with the purple. In Côte Rôtie in the Rhône Valley, for instance, there is a long-standing tradition of co-fermenting a small proportion of pale Viognier grapes with the Syrah to make the wine taste smoother and stabilise the pigment of the red grapes. Copies of this recipe were all the rage in Australia a few years ago and Shiraz/Viognier has become a staple offering there.
But the white grapes that once routinely diluted Chianti, including that from its Chianti Classico heartland between Florence and Siena, were there for a much less noble reason than Viognier is to be found in Marcel Guigal’s seductive La Mouline, my favourite Côte Rôtie. The requirement that Chianti contain between 10 and 30 per cent of white grapes was written into the original 1967 DOC (Italy’s answer to Appellation Contrôlée) regulations for the entirely expedient reason that it provided a convenient use for the substantial proportion of pale-skinned grapes then planted in the zone. Some of them were Malvasia, an ancient Greek variety with real character that is today dried to make Vin Santo, Tuscany’s sweet wine treasure. But the great majority of white wine grapes that used to go into Chianti, blanching its colour and diluting its flavour, were the most basic sort of Trebbiano whose wine is generally near-flavourless and best distilled, as it is in France’s Cognac district where it is known as Ugni Blanc.
By Jancis Robinson
Published: July 4 2008
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