1. Home
2. Products
3. Red wines

Pieve di Campoli

Chianti DOCG

Dry light bodied red

Central Italy is most widely associated with Sangiovese and the most famous wine made from it, Chianti. Chianti is made in Tuscany in the foothills of the Apennines between the cities of Pisa, Florence and Siena. Sangiovese is the dominant grape, but the wines are often blended with small amounts of other black grapes, both of French and Italian origin.

The Florentine Republic identified the hills between Florence and Siena as ‘Chianti’ in the fourteenth century. In the twentieth century the original zone, now referred to as the Classico, was expanded to include a huge area of central Tuscany and up to 30% of white grapes were allowed in the blend. At the same time the government financed large scale replantings of Tuscan vineyards, geared towards mass production. Even now, a high percentage of the vineyards in Chianti are the old style high production vineyards of the sixties, but it has undergone a more profound change in the last 20 years than practically any other wine in Italy. It started in 1984 when they were upgraded to DOCG, adjusting the blending formula and placing tighter restrictions on yield, and in 1995 it became legal to produce a Chianti with 100% Sangiovese. 

Currently the Chianti DOCG zone covers a big area that takes in more than 42k acres, of which 17k are the original Classico. There are now seven sub-zones, Colli Aretini, Colli Fiorentini, Colli Senesi, Colli Pisane, Montalbano, Rufina and Montispertoli.