Felsina Chianti Classico Riserva Rancia 2006

My wife and I had dinner tonight at a cozy (and by cozy, I mean really small and extremely loud) Italian BYOB restaurant in town. In preparation for this meal, my wife picked out a bottle of wine to blind taste test me on. This is something we generally do at home but we are starting to do it when we eat out as well, as a way to further hone my wine skills. It might sound like a very un-cool thing to do but it really works. Then, after you identify the wine, right or wrong, you can put together in your mind what characteristics really stood out.

Anyway, tonight's wine was one that I picked up rather quickly, almost immediately. I don't drink a lot of chianti but this is certainly an excellent one. It was extremely well balanced all of the way through the palate, it had complexity with dark fruits throughout and it had a long, smooth finish. That said, the wine is probably a little young and had strong tannins which should give the Felsina at least ten years of aging. But, the important thing was the tannins still did not overwhelm the wine. It just made my cheeks a little drier than usual.

Now, getting back to my being able to pick up the wine rather quickly- I don't think this demonstrates my wine knack but I do think it gets into how varietally accurate a wine is. In this case, this chianti riserva was a beautiful, accurate representation of the sangiovese grape. I find that really good, non-blended, varietally accurate wines are easier to blind-taste. I think there is such a thing as a varietally inaccurate wine that can still be tasty. For example, last week I had an Australian cabernet sauvignon that had strong bell, almost hot, peppers on the nose that would have led me to guess cabernet franc but the wine was still good. It just seemed a closer representation of another grape. There is a subtle difference there.
This wine is not cheap- $45/bottle- but it is excellent. I would give it a 93. If you buy it, hold it another 5 years and mellow out the tannins a little to make it an even better drinking experience.