Every month our Restaurant Manager Alessandro Fè will present you, a wine selected from the cellar of the 2 Michelin Star Santa Elisabetta Restaurant. He will guide us on an oenological journey made of personal research on the territory to select the best Italian and international bottles to offer to the guests of the restaurant.
This month we start with Castello di Monsanto’s Chardonnay Collection Fabrizio Bianchi 2005.
One of the grape varieties that symbolize the world of wine is undoubtedly Chardonnay, a grape that has managed to conquer the world in terms of geographic cultivation and all its most prestigious stages.
One of the reasons for its success is certainly its versatility, it can give life to light and fruity whites or to structured and powerful wines, long-lived over time, used in blending with other grapes and, if harvested in advance, it becomes the basis of great sparkling wines. It has an intense and full flavour, an intertwining of citrus sapid suggestions, then peach, many tropical fruits, banana, mint, white flowers, rocks and mushrooms, smoky, buttery and vanilla scents.
The Restaurant Manager Alessandro Fé continues: I personally find very interesting the intertwining he had with the oenological past of our Tuscany, already famous in 1700 for the quality of the wines produced from French white vines, but it was only in 1878 that a Tuscan white based Chardonnay received the gold medal at the Paris Expo.
Today, I would like to make a small focus on the Chardonnay Fabrizio Bianchi 2005 from Castello di Monsanto, the result of the intuition of Fabrizio Bianchi who, in the mid-seventies, decided to plant this vineyard on his own land outside the Chianti Classico appellation; with an eye to the great whites of Burgundy, in fact. At the beginning of its history, it was entirely fermented in wood, but in the 2000s, the Chardonnay saw a gradual streamlining of the oak until it settled on today’s invoice that provides for the fermentation in steel of about 70% of the grapes.
The visit to the cellar was very beautiful, thanks to which the richness of the Chianti terroir is perceived. Waiting for us at the entrance to the cellar is a glass case set in the floor, under which huge fossil shells still rest today to testify to the immense heritage from which the vines draw, a heritage that we then find in wine.
I was able to particularly appreciate the evolution of the vintages of vintages considered less fortunate for reds, such as 2002 and especially 2005, a wine that today is perfectly balanced with alternating buttery and mineral notes, always supported by a present freshness and indicated to keep at home, easily combining it with white meats or tasty fish.
The typical wine that I like to describe as “dangerous”.
The wines presented by Alessandro Fè will soon be on sale in our online shop and available in the wine list at the reopening of the restaurant.
