Vertical Tasting of Castello di Ama's Chianti Classico Vigneto Bellavista Ama is a Chianti estate whose wines, though 
expensive, rank among the best not just in Chianti but the world.&nbsp; 
Known today as Castello di Ama (I remember well when back in the '70s 
and '80s&nbsp;everyone referred to it with&nbsp;a more humble Fattoria di Ama), it
 has been around for some time; in fact, its existence has been documented 
back to 998 A.D. Quality winemaking on the premises is a more 
recent event, as the real leap into wine stardom occurred only with the 
arrival of Lorenza Sebasti (one of Ama's owners) and winemaker Marco 
Pallanti.&nbsp; This now wife-and-husband team has been running Ama with 
talent and flair for more than 25 vintages.&nbsp; Until recently, Pallanti was also the acting President of the Chianti Classico 
Consortium.&nbsp; The estate owns 90 hectares of 
vines averaging roughly 30 years of age, most of which are planted 
between 300 to 500 meters above sea level.&nbsp; Located in the hamlet of 
Lecchi, in Gaiole in Chianti, one of the three historic towns
 where Chianti was born (along with Radda in Chianti and Castellina in 
Chianti), Ama benefits from one of the true grand cru areas of all of Chianti Classico. Perhaps
 the single most important contribution made by Sebasti and Pallanti 
over the years, not just to Ama but to Chianti Classico in general, has been
 the relentless promotion of Chianti Classico as a great wine in its own 
right.&nbsp; I remember the guffaws and smirks of those in attendance at a 
wine tasting in Rome in 1985 when Lorenza Sebasti said she strongly 
believed that Chianti had little to envy in the great wines of Bordeaux, 
Burgundy and Napa Valley.&nbsp; Bewildered looks and scornful comments were 
also plentiful when it came to the high prices Ama asked for its wines.&nbsp; "I have 
always felt sangiovese was one of the world's great grape varieties," Sebasti told me in a wine tasting many years ago, "but it was hampered, even diminished, by shoddy winemaking and a 
lack of ambition on the part of many producers.&nbsp; I believed it could and
 should have been so much more.&nbsp; For this reason, at Ama we&nbsp;did not&nbsp;
produce a Supertuscan wine containing sangiovese, preferring to reserve
 all of our best sangiovese grapes for our Chianti Classico."&nbsp; (As a sign of the continuing progress and evolution of Ama's wines and understanding of its terroir,&nbsp;only recently did Ama finally begin to produce a&nbsp;sangiovese Supertuscan wine, called Haiku.) Another 
contrarian view held by Sebasti and Pallanti, at least for those times, 
was that Chianti, despite the presence of large estates owned by noble 
families, actually had more in common with Burgundy than 
Bordeaux, because they feel that sangiovese has a lot more in common 
with pinot noir (site-sensitivity, a medium red color due to relatively low anthocyanin
 concentration, and a medium rather than full body) than it does 
with the cabernets and merlots of the world.&nbsp; The desire to 
produce world-class Chianti and the idea that sangiovese could express site specificity as clearly as nebbiolo or pinot noir motivated 
Pallanti to carry out a zonation study of Ama's terroir (not a common 
practice in Italy's wine scene in the '80s), in order to identify single
 plots that might produce different and better sangiovese wines.&nbsp; With 
the information obtained through this study, and with the belief that sangiovese 
and pinot noir shared similar characteristics, the logical next step was
 to create a single-vineyard Chianti.&nbsp; Thus, beginning with the 1978 
vintage (when the Chianti Classico Vigneto Bellavista was born), four 
different single-vineyard or cru bottlings were produced at Ama.&nbsp; The 
Bellavista was followed by the Vigneto San Lorenzo (first made in 1982), Vigneto La Casuccia (1985) and Vigneto Bertinga (1988). While
 the regular Chianti is certainly an excellent wine (though in my view, 
with its sometimes generous dollop of merlot and aromas and flavors more
 reminiscent of pinot noir&nbsp;it's hardly&nbsp;a traditional Chianti), there is 
no doubt that the La Casuccia and Bellavista are two of Italy's best red wines.&nbsp; La Casuccia is roughly 90% sangiovese and 10% merlot, while Bellavista is typically 80% sangiovese and 20% malvasia nera, depending 
on the vintage.&nbsp; Earlier vintages also had a little canaiolo nero 
included in the blend, so beware the many inaccurate reports that blindly state that this wine is always 80% sangiovese and 20% malvasia nera.&nbsp; In my opinion, the top star here is the Vigneto Bellavista, the 
oldest cru wine made at Ama:&nbsp; it speaks more of Chianti's terroir than does La
 Casuccia, whose merlot presence can dominate in many vintages.&nbsp; On 
the contrary, Bellavista benefits from the magical synergy that happens 
between sangiovese and malvasia nera (something that is also true of canaiolo 
nero and sangiovese.)&nbsp; This is because neither canaiolo nero nor 
malvasia nera overwhelms the delicate aromas and flavors of sangiovese 
but rather complement them, something that rarely happens, despite what 
you may read or hear elsewhere, with the more brutal, forceful cabernets
 and merlot.&nbsp; In contrast to canaiolo nero, malvasia nera adds an 
aromatic, spicy/herbal note to sangiovese.&nbsp; Malvasia nera's synergy with 
sangiovese is also exemplified by two other truly great Tuscan wines, 
Castellare's I Sodi di San Niccolò and Capannelle's Solare. The Bellavista vineyard consists of roughly 23 hectares (or about 56 acres), with southeast and 
southwest exposures.&nbsp; The soil is the poor, friable galestro 
typical of Chianti Classico, where the best sangiovese are made, and the 
vines were planted between 1967 and 1975 at an altitude ranging from 456
 meters above sea level (in the Campinuovi area) to 530 meters (in the Bellaria
 portion.)&nbsp; The winemaking has not changed a great deal over the years, 
though with the 1982 vintage small oak barrels were introduced, and 
gradually the very large traditional oak casks were phased out.&nbsp; As for 
the wine, the Vigneto Bellavista is a standout Chianti Classico, 
amazingly elegant and perfumed in the better vintages, but not made 
every year.&nbsp; Its silky tannins and its very pure aromas and 
flavors, which in some vintages bear more than a passing resemblance to
 pinot noir (witness the standout 1988), make it an often compelling and distinctive 
Chianti Classico.&nbsp; Besides the presence of the malvasia nera, Bellavista
 is also characterized by the high acidity and refinement that come from the higher altitude at which the grapes grow--not to mention the much cooler microclimate than that 
of most other Chiantis.&nbsp; When all is said and done, the extent 
to which Sebaste and Pallanti have succeeded in 
fullfilling their vision for the Chianti Classico&nbsp;of Ama is borne out by the high prices and critical acclaim achieved by their wines 
all over the world.&nbsp; The wines for this report came from my personal cellar and were tasted in November of 2012 in Rome; I also had the opportunity to taste most of the same vintages on two occasions in Rome in 2011, from samples provided by the estate.&nbsp; Marco Pallanti was present at the first tasting, and I thank 
him for providing background data on the estate and the wines.&nbsp; My scores and 
tasting notes are from the 2012 tasting, although results were quite similar in all three tastings.&nbsp; In my notes, I have pointed out a few instances where I found noticeable differences between the various bottles tasted.&nbsp; Readers may notice that the range of scores for these wines is rather small; to some extent, this is due to Ama's uncanny ability to excel in lesser vintages.

Vertical Tasting of Castello di Ama's Chianti Classico Vigneto Bellavista

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