A little red wine from Greve in Chianti, made from grapes grown around the house in which the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano is said to have been born. They say this on the bottle as if I am supposed to reverence the man. On this note, all I have to say is that I have relatives on Staten Island, and crossing the damn bridge named after him is the stuff of which nightmares are made.

Anyway, the winery has a terrible website, and I was able to glean very little information on how this wine was made. In fact, pretty much all I was able to get was that the wine spent 10 months in Slavonian oak barrels (which are being used more and more by Italian winemakers, presumably because almost anything from Croatia can be gotten on the cheap).

This wine wasn't bad, although I'm afraid I have rather (unrealistically) high expectations for Chiantis in general. It is young looking, a very appealing reddish-purple. The aroma centers around the floral notes imparted by the base Sangiovese grape, though it was perhaps not as fruity as it could have been. The taste was nothing to write home about, offering light fruit and a bit of oakiness. The tannins were mild but nevertheless present, lending a little heft to this otherwise light-ish wine. In the end, I guess it was fine, maybe a little wimpier than I like to get at $15 a bottle, but still a good middle of the road kind of Chianti Classico. I just couldn't shake the feeling that they could have done better if they'd tried harder.

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