2015 Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Vigneto Bellavista

Lorenza Sebaste and Marco Pallanti turned out a brilliant set of wines in 2015. No doubt Ama's high altitude helped preserve a measure of freshness in the wines. The three flagship reds - La Casuccia, Bellavista and L'Apparita - are all stellar and well worth considering. Pallanti describes 2015 as having similarities with the years of the 1990s, especially in the timing of the harvest, which took place between late September and early October. The high quality crop created the conditions for Ama to bottle all of their top selections. The Ama wines are often alluring when young, but they also have a track record of aging exceptionally well. If I have one quibble here, it is the use of the Gran Selezione denomination for the San Lorenzo, which creates a range with three Gran Seleziones of very different prices, a less than ideal situation for consumers trying to understand where wines fit in a qualitative hierarchy. As for the wines themselves, they are stellar, especially at the top of the range.