Fèlsina Vertical Tasting: Pushing the Boundaries of Style in Chianti Classico

The year 1990 delivered an exceptional harvest across the broad swath of Europe’s wine regions. Bordeaux and Burgundy saw landmark vintages. So did Rioja in Spain. In Italy, both Piedmont and Tuscany excelled. Yet on the Italian peninsula, something more significant was unfolding: a fundamental shift in the way wine was being made.

Part of that story came into focus during a tasting last month in the Tuscan town of Castelnuovo Berardenga to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Fèlsina winery and the 40th anniversary of two of its defining wines: Chianti Classico Rancia and Toscana IGT Fontalloro.

The story began in 1966, when the Romagna entrepreneur Domenico Poggiali fell in love with what had once been a hunting estate in Tuscany. He soon recognized that the property, on the southern edge of Siena province in Chianti Classico, held far greater promise as a wine estate.

Two figures would prove decisive at the time. One was Poggiali’s son-in-law, Giuseppe Mazzocolin, a philosophy professor with a degree in literature from the University of Florence. The other was the young winemaker Franco Bernabei, a technically trained enologist determined to move Tuscan winemaking beyond its rural traditions and toward a more rigorous, professional era. One questioned what Tuscan wine could become. The other figured out how to make it happen.

The wines produced over the past four decades reveal the importance of that partnership, but to fully appreciate them they must be viewed within the context of Tuscany at the time. Through the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, for example, Chianti Classico regulations still required white grapes in the blend.

The historic “Ricasoli formula” was increasingly constraining the appellation. The wines were vibrant but often lacked precision and depth. Among the first to recognize those limitations were Piero Antinori, Enzo Morganti with Vigorello, Alberto Kunz and Tegolato, Sergio Manetti at the Montevertine estate, Fabrizio Bianchi of Castello di Monsanto and, of course, Mazzocolin and the recently deceased Bernabei.

By 1985 – and even more convincingly by 1990 – Fèlsina was already producing wines of remarkable quality. They showed greater balance, concentration and palate weight than their predecessors, with tannins that today feel beautifully integrated but would likely have seemed imposing at the time. By contemporary standards they were also less precise and more rustic, their structure carrying a certain fragility.

As the years passed, however, the pursuit of quality pushed stylistic boundaries further. Extraction became increasingly assertive. This was not an attempt to chase market trends; rather, it reflected a belief that a richer, more concentrated style represented progress over the leaner, more angular wines of the past.

Small new oak barrels became more common, and cellar practices increasingly focused on extracting every possible component from the grapes. While some estates pushed these techniques to almost excessive extremes, Bernabei and Mazzocolin managed to maintain a delicate balance between power and finesse.

Even so, experience eventually suggested that the wines had become too forceful. Castelnuovo Berardenga naturally produces a broader, more austere expression of sangiovese, thanks to its clay-rich soils and warmer climate compared with the higher, cooler parts of Chianti Classico.

Bernabei and Mazzocolin responded by easing off. Fermentations became more infusion than extraction. The wines retained concentration without accumulating unnecessary weight or structure.

“There is a threshold for sangioveto," Mazzocolin said during the tasting, deliberately using the grape’s historic name. “Never too much extraction, never too much oak, never too much aging. The variety itself imposes a physiological limit that every grower must respect.” Much of the credit also belongs to the extensive vineyard replanting carried out during the 2000s.

Today, the newest vintages have not yet reached the complexity of their older counterparts, largely because of vine age. They may no longer stand apart from their peers as dramatically as they did in the 1990s, precisely because the innovations introduced then reshaped the standards of the region. What distinguishes them instead is the refinement of their tannins, which seems to recapture the freshness of the estate’s early years with far greater precision.

The standout wine of the tasting was the perfect-scoring Fèlsina Chianti Classico Rancia Riserva 1990. It’s a meaty, impressively youthful wine with vibrant aromas of bergamot, licorice, earth, minerals and hints of chicken droppings and rhubarb candy. Full-bodied with firm tannins on mid-palate, it features a velvety texture alongside refreshing acidity and an endless, savory finish. It’s such a great wine with both structure and elegance, and certainly more angular when it was delivered.

The most consistently impressive pair of wines came from the 2010 vintage. The Fèlsina Chianti Classico Rancia Riserva 2010 proved to be a mature wine with aromas of dark tobacco, forest floor, mint, prunes, earth, chocolate and leather. It’s full-bodied, creamy, condensed and stylish, with amazing freshness; supple yet powerful.

The Fèlsina Toscana Fontalloro 2010, meanwhile, is an earthy wine with complex aromas of minerals, musk, bergamot, black cherries, prunes, tobacco and umami. It’s focused on the nose, full-bodied, velvety and creamy, with resolved tannins and refreshing acidity.

If the 2000 and 2015 vintages represent the estate’s high-water mark for power, the 2023s point toward the more restrained elegance that Bernabei and Mazzocolin ultimately sought. The Chianti Classico Gran Selezione Rancia 2023 is restrained with complex aromas of black and red cherries, bergamot, ash, embers and smoke. It’s quite supple, crisp and tight, with firm, velvety tannins and a chalky finish due to the youth that’s good and savory

And the Toscana Fontalloro 2023 is a perfumed wine with graceful aromas of mint, balsamic, toast, red fruit and licorice. It’s tense and fresh, with mid-palate density and extracted, powerful yet focused tannins. As a result, it shows lots of energy over sternness.

– Aldo Fiordelli, Senior Editor

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by the JamesSuckling.com tasting team. You can sort the wines below by vintage and score. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.