What has Gran Selezione done for Chianti?

Monty Waldin reports on the debate around Chianti Classico’s top-tier Gran Selezione classification, which is still raging four years after the first releases, and suggests several wines to try...

In February 2014 the first wines labelled under Chianti Classico’s newly created top-level tier of Gran Selezione were released, from the 2010 vintage.

Gran Selezione’s introduction was controversial, to say the least, given that no fewer than 19 different iterations of red Tuscan wines bearing the word ‘Chianti’ already existed.

The onus, one might think, was on Chianti Classico’s Gran Selezione – funded partly by the wine-growers, but mainly by EU subsidies – to demonstrate its clear points of difference from the two existing tiers below it; namely Chianti Classico Normale at the base of the quality pyramid, and Chianti Classico Riserva, which now finds itself in the middle.

Save yourself the eye-watering pain of examining reams of regulations looking for substantive technical wine-growing or winemaking differences between the Chianti Classico trio. There are none.