The History of Chianti with Sean O’Callaghan

Sean O’Callaghan, winemaker at Tenuta di Carleone, discusses the history of Chianti, the mezzadaria system, and the different grapes that were historically used in Chianti.

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We are at a little winery in the middle of Chianti Classico about an hour south of Florence about 25 minutes east of Siena. It’s a little bit different to areas like Piemonte or Burgundy or the Pfalz in Germany, areas that have had generations and generations of small families with small holdings of quality vineyard.
This area up until even the 70s was basically run by the mezzadria system which is a sharecropping system, which meant the lord of the manor had his farmers working on all the land and they would rent the property which they lived in from the lord of the manor. They give half of the crop of anything they made, so tomatoes, vines, olives everything. Half of it would go to the to the lord of the manor, which meant basically they’d make quantity. The quality aspect was non-existent. The mezzadria system as a way of paying rent and as a way of payment was forbidden in 1979 so its really fairly recent. The whole mentality of this area is still still very much mezzadria. If you talk to the guys in Gaiole or in Radda, the farmers, it’s very difficult for them to understand that when you go and do green harvest to take out grapes they probably look at you and say yes I’ll do it and then they’ll turn around and walk down the vines and say no. The mentality of quality in this area is very new. What happened then is that we got wealthy people coming in and buying buying big houses, beautiful houses, the area is beautiful so they bought old houses renovated them and found they had three or four hectares of vineyard maybe on the site and then slowly but surely the quality… people started making wine wanted to make quality. The area’s is a fantastic area for making wine but it’s just really in the last 30, 40 years that the quality aspect has come up. Then we had to thank, well firstly the Baron Riscaioli at Brolio in eighteen hundred and something had all this land with all these vineyards on it with Sangiovese. He had to come up with a way of marketing marketing the wine. So he put a blend together of this really tough tight sangiovese which was virtually undrinkable, and he mixed it with some white wine and some canaiolo. We had basically had Sangiovese and Canaiolo which the two main grape varieties here Sangiovese is the main grape variety but we have canaiolo and malvasia and trebbiano. But in that stage…forty to fifty percent of the wine was white so he put the blend together and put this all into one blend and the white wine made the wine light and fruity and drinkable. And he put in the fiasco. And that was the basis for Chianti Classico, this blend. With time the blend changed obviously the the white wine was reduced and when I got here we had to put, in 1991 we had to put him I think it was five percent…I can’t actually remember now, but I think five percent of the blend had to be white grapes now being in Italy laws are there to be broken. As I am on video I can tell you this now because it’s happened. John I think was twenty years on and he hadn’t put any white grapes in the wine, even though he’d had the DOCG and you know, everything was official he puts just make it Sangiovese. Not because it was you know in Syrah, they put in their Viognier as it makes the wine give something. The problem with the Malvasia and Trebbiano is that it actually didn’t give the wine anything. It just made it light and fruity, so John in those days he left it out and made the Sangiovese even if in the cellar books it said Chianti but this is not just John. This was the top wine produces through the 70s through the 80s, they’re all doing that. And I think in 94 the DOCG changed and we were allowed to have a minimum of eighty percent Sangiovese and then I’m a maximum of one hundred percent Sangiovese.
So your vineyards your vineyards have to have eighty percent Sangiovese in them and the wine has to have eighty percent Sangiovese minimum. Unfortunately you’re allowed to put twenty percent of something else in it. Now I say unfortunately because twenty percent of the wine could be Cabernet, could be Merlot, could be anything and I think this area should be a sangiovese area because the area is traditional like that. There’s people other people who think otherwise I think you can make Cabernet and Merlot here and still have it tasting Tuscan but there’s so much cabernet or merlot made around the world that I think we should be trying to make the best sangiovese in the world rather than try and complicate matters by copying other people.