Poggerino Chianti Classico Riserva Bugialla 2019

Floriana Ginori Conti inherited the winery from her father in the 1970s, and began in 1980 together with her husband Fabrizio Lanza, to produce a Chianti Classico with the “Poggerino” label. The estate has always been ‘organic’. It’s no badge of honor, it’s just how they’ve always done it.

Since 1999, when she handed the reins to her two children, Piero and Benedetta Lanza, the rise has been meteoric. Piero believes that great wines are grown not made and his dedication to his 12 hectares of vineyards borders on the fanatical.

Admittedly, I did lose focus when he went into painstaking detail on green vs brown organic manure-based fertilizer and his unique tests on the proper cycling through of both, for example.

But no one can argue with the results. Within 10 short years, their base Chianti had found a spot at #18 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the Year.

But their flagship wine, the Riserva Bugialla, is a very special single-vineyard Chianti. Not only is it drawn from the estate’s oldest parcel (almost 40 years old), it’s just the best berries. Piero first passes through the vineyard and hand picks the larger bunches, leaving the smaller ones behind to continue to ripen on the vine. Only these grapes become the Riserva.