Italy’s Chianti Wine District Ups Standards

Baron Bettino Ricasoli tends to take the long view of the wine trade.

The Ricasoli family has been making wine at Gaiole in the Chianti wine district of Tuscany since 1141--22 years before the first stone was laid for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and 351 years before Columbus stumbled upon the New World.

Over the centuries, Casa Vinicola Barone Ricasoli has known good times and, well, less good times. At present, however, the trade worldwide is suffering a severe case of overproduction, he said in an interview in Los Angeles last week.

The Chianti district is facing the glut by raising standards of quality and cutting the quantity of wine that can bear the Chianti designation, Ricasoli said. To qualify, he said, it will no longer be enough to produce the wine on the slopes of that rocky, geographically defined wine-growing district about 40 miles north of Florence. Starting with the 1984 vintage, tasters will pass on all Chianti wine, and those that fail the taste test will have to market their wine as ordinary table wine.

“This has risks for the producer,” Ricasoli said. But because it also cuts the maximum yield per hectare (2.5 acres) to 5,200 liters from 8,000 liters, there will be less Chianti produced, which should command a better price at home and abroad, he said.

This approach marks a new step for Chianti producers, who only won their legal designation as a quality wine in the last quarter of a century. Chianti wines have been living down a reputation as “cheap Italian wine” acquired in the past, he said, when any red liquid put into a straw-covered flask was labeled “Chianti”--much as cheap California white wine is called “Chablis,” an appellation taken from a refined French wine.

Consequently, he added, Chianti wines are no longer marketed in the colorful wicker fiaschi ,which for centuries peasants moistened as they went to the fields to keep their luncheon wine cool.

Ricasoli has watched this evolution from the family’s estate since he succeeded his father as president in 1948. Today, he and his Italian colleagues produce more than half the wine imported into the United States.

That doesn’t exactly please California wine producers, who are dealing with a wine glut of their own. But overproduction is not limited to the U.S. wine industry, Ricasoli said. European producers face the same problem. Annual wine consumption in Italy and France has fallen since the 1970s from about 110 liters per person to 85, he said.

“Exports are increasing,” he said, “but not enough to offset the falling off at home. This makes the market in Italy and France very nervous and competitive.”

It also leads to price cutting, and U.S. vintners have charged that European producers unload wine at prices below cost of production. “This causes difficulties with the American wine industry,” Ricasoli acknowledged, “but it isn’t dumping. It’s the contrary. The prices we get for export are better than we get in the home market because of the strong (Italian) competition.”

The strong dollar has made European wines attractive on the U.S. market, he said, while pricing American wines beyond the reach of Europeans. “If it weren’t for the high exchange rate, American wine would have a much larger market,” he said.

The European Economic Community, or Common Market, has sought to maintain wine prices by diverting lower-quality wines to distilleries, Ricasoli said. Previously, the EEC subsidized growers by buying wine for distilling at above-market prices, which, of course, only encouraged production. But the program became so expensive and controversial, he said, that the practice now is to limit production by setting yields and requiring excess wine to be distilled at the market price for alcohol. U.S. Wine Imports (millions of gallons)

1980 1981 1982 1983 Italy 54.26 59.86 63.02 63.44 France 11.38 15.05 18.05 22.27 Germany 11.66 13.03 13.20 15.06 Others 10.65 10.37 10.58 10.34 Total 87.95 98.31 104.85 111.11

Sources: U.S. Department of Commerce; National Assn. of Beverage Importers