A challenging year has yielded unique opportunities—and an exceptional vintage
NEW YORK, September 9, 2020 — As the Covid-19 crisis forced tasting room, tourism, and restaurant closures across Italy and Europe, the winemakers of the Chianti Classico Consortium (Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico) have been able to spend more time than ever in their vineyards and cellars. The result is that in such a challenging and altogether unheralded year, Chianti Classico producers have had a chance to focus on the 2020 vintage with a never-before-possible commitment to detail and singular attention to every aspect of cultivation, vineyard management, and production.
While 2020 has not been an easy year, the quality of this Black Rooster vintage may well turn out to be legendary, according to Chianti Classico Consortium President Giovani Manetti—and perhaps one of the greatest in living memory.
“The pandemic has in fact given us a unique opportunity: that of being able to concentrate all our efforts on the care of the vineyard for a few months,” says Manetti.“The goal that we, Chianti Classico winemakers, have today is to produce the best wine of our career and that this is the memory that we will bring with us in a few years, when we will open some exceptional bottles of Gallo Nero 2020.”
While rooted in centuries of tradition and history, the Chianti Classico Consortium is a thoroughly modern organization making use of all new resources and support mechanisms available to assist innovation, cooperation, and production among stakeholders as member producers continue to maintain growth under challenging circumstances.
As winemakers spend more time than ever tending to their vineyards, the Consortium has approved an extraordinary plan of interventions to support the appellation in the post-Covid emergency period, with strategic planning designed so as to not to interrupt the path—undertaken for years—of valorization and development that has defined the denomination The emergency actions taken by the Consortium have also provided for a January 1, 2021 release, instead of October 1, for the 2019 vintage, which is itself shaping up to praiseworthy.
Extraordinary times produce extraordinary wines, and the upcoming releases and vintage reports from Chianti Classico will undoubtedly show that this historical denomination’s future is just as bright as ever.
For more information, please contact Silvia Fiorentini of the Chianti Classico Consortium or Luca Venturelli of Colangelo & Partners.
About the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico:
The Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico exists to protect, oversee, and valorize the Chianti Classico denomination. Since the Consortium’s founding in 1924, the organization has changed its name and the design of its logo, the Black Rooster, which since 2005 has been the trademark of the whole denomination. As one of the premier institutional organizations in the European Union in the grape-growing and winemaking sector, the Consortium represents 96 percent of the DOCG production. The entire production chain is supervised by a public tracking system, which enables consumers all over the world to check the bottle they’ve purchased via the Consortium’s website. The Consortium also conducts research and development in the agronomic and enological fields, in collaboration with prestigious educational and research institutes. For more information, please visit www.chianticlassico.com.
