A Rhone Ranger in Chianti Country

A pink ribbon announcing the birth of a baby girl has been pinned to the door of an ancient house in the Tuscan hamlet of Olena.

“Look. Isn’t it wonderful?” asks Paolo de Marchi excitedly. The 47-year-old winemaker is not simply being sentimental. He is excited about a sign of new life in this ghost village, which lies within the boundaries of Isole e Olena, his family’s estate in the Chianti Classico winegrowing region.

Seated in a cramped, battered old Fiat, he is on his way to inspect new vineyards above Olena, where he is hoping to write a new chapter in the history of his estate and of the region.

Isole e Olena is one of the estates that was responsible for Chianti Classico’s growing reputation for quality during the 1980s. The son of a Turin lawyer whose family bought the estate in 1956, de Marchi is well aware that the roots of Chianti Classico’s recent success lie in a disaster: the sudden depopulation of the region during the early 1960s.

“The movement of the rural population, which took a century or longer in most of Western Europe, took place here within the space of five years,” he says. “It was this and the arrival of new landowners which led to the big changes here.”

New landowners like the De Marchis brought a vision of something far above the region’s traditional rustic vins ordinaires. They also brought new methods and technology with them, initiating a winemaking revolution.

De Marchi took control of the estate in 1976 after studying agricultural science at Turin University. During his studies, he worked the 1973 harvest, then spent the next winter at a large winery in California’s Central Valley. “It was the time of big changes in the wine industry there, so this was very exciting and stimulating,” he says.

The red wines that de Marchi has made from the native Sangiovese grape have gained an international cult following. What is less well known is that he has also played a leading role in revolutionizing viticulture in Chianti. For despite his own success and that of his region in general, he sees fundamental problems in the vineyards of Chianti Classico.

“The development we had the last 20 years was great, but we still have a long way to go,” he says. “People here talk with pride about their old vines and low yield per acre, both of which ought to be very good for quality, but often this is nonsense.” Nonsense because the statistics told to journalists by vintners may be true, but they say nothing about the wine in the glass.

The problem he all too frequently sees behind such stories is a high crop level per vine, resulting in disappointing wine quality. “Six to eight pounds of grapes per vine is not unusual, and it is far too much,” he says.

De Marchi does not mince words, and his critique of Chianti’s failings is precisely thought out. Just like fruit from trees that have been encouraged to crop too heavily, grapes from overloaded vines taste watery.

His solution to this problem, which also affected many of the vineyards he inherited at Isole e Olena, has been a long series of experiments, beginning in 1987, in planting vineyards at high densities: twice to nearly four times the traditional 1,000 vines per hectare [equivalent to 405 vines per acre]. As he replanted, he also took the opportunity to experiment with new grape varieties, including Syrah from France’s Rhone Valley.

“Planting at 2,800 vines per hectare enables each vine to carry a maximum two pounds of grapes, which ripen perfectly and give us a decent-sized total crop,” he says, shifting the Fiat down into first gear to take a steeply inclined track so badly eroded it is like climbing a bare rock face.

This is a remote and rugged corner of the region, and man’s hold on the land is still tenuous here. Few of the many American and German tourists who flock to Tuscany each summer make it to this corner of Chianti. The last three miles of the way are nothing more than a dirt track through forests and scrub. It’s hard believe that the bustling town of Siena is less than half an hour’s drive away.

Emerging from the forest, de Marchi climbs a steep hillside, to which rows of newly planted vines cling. Two years ago this land was a forest littered with boulders.

“We had to remove 3,000 truckloads of rock to plant these 17 acres,” de Marchi explains, as excitedly as he had pointed out the pink ribbon in Olena. “We were lucky that a construction company specializing in coastal defenses was so glad to get our rock they took it away free of charge.”

The combination of the steep slope and southerly exposure could make this site ideal for the late-ripening Sangiovese grape. If this proves to be the case, the herculean task of establishing them will have been worthwhile.

“People always say the problem with Sangiovese is astringency and high acidity,” de Marchi says after our return to the winery, which is housed in the smaller hamlet of Isole. “But if you bite an apple that is tart and astringent, then you would say that it is unripe. This is the real problem with Sangiovese, people are picking it unripe.”

The Isole e Olena wines stand out from other Tuscan Sangiovese reds because of their ripe fruit flavors and an elegance rare in Chianti Classico, the result of an unrelenting struggle for grapes with the maximum ripeness.

A magnificent example of this is the 1995 Cepparello, which de Marchi describes as “the big brother of our Chianti, even if that designation does not appear on the label.” It is a deep, rich red wine with complex spicy aromas and a persistent yet delicate aftertaste. Already delicious, it will be even more refined when it has matured in the bottle for two or three years longer.

It has clearly been vinified for drinking pleasure, rather than for winning blind tastings, for which deeper color, fuller body and more obvious aromas would be necessary.

Although part of this wine was matured in new French oak, it does not have the prominent vanilla and smoke aromas that dominate many so-called Super-Tuscan reds. Made from Sangiovese alone, it is also missing the generous slug of Cabernet Sauvignon, which, combined with abundant new oak, makes some Super-Tuscans taste as if they come from California or Australia, rather than Chianti.

“Another big problem for this region is that what Chianti red wines should be has not yet been defined,” de Marchi continues, as he pours cask samples of his 1997 reds. Though Italian law limits which grape varieties may be used for the Chianti Classico DOCG designation, it also allows a broad stylistic diversity.

“We are looking for fruit character, concentrated flavors and balance,” he says. Even his Chianti Classico from this vintage has all these things. Its black cherry aroma leaps out of the glass. In the mouth, the interplay of tannins, fruit and alcohol gives it a texture like a finely woven piece of cloth, an impressive achievement considering that it is the estate’s simplest red wine.

The 1997 Cepparello takes these qualities to a higher level of intensity and gives an impression of sweetness, even though it is bone dry, the sure sign of extremely ripe grapes expertly vinified.

Superb as it is, the Cepparello faces some tough competition within de Marchi’s own cellar from the 1997 Syrah, a very powerful yet sleek red with strong smoke and blackberry aromas. This is de Marchi’s ninth vintage of a Rhone varietal that he pioneered in the region. All the estate’s nontraditional grapes--Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah--are vinified separately and sold under a second label, Collezione de Marchi.

De Marchi’s first Syrah, the 1988, is still vigorous, but it has added the mellowness of age to its wild animal bouquet. “Some vintages we get this aroma, some not,” says de Marchi, obviously perplexed. The Syrah in current release, the 1994 vintage, also has this character, together with a remarkable amount of power for its difficult vintage.

De Marchi’s quick mind jumps rapidly from one subject to another, and suddenly he is back to the problems of the region. “Nobody seems to talk about it, but for me the state of the bulk wine market for Chianti is very worrisome; bad wines sell for the same price as good ones. This cannot bode well for the future.”

It certainly suggests that the name is more important for the market than the taste, and this has frequently been the sign of over-commercialization in other winegrowing countries and regions.

The success of his own family’s estate may be the most important thing for de Marchi, but he cares passionately about the fate of his new home. The shadow of over-commercialization in Tuscany worries him deeply. Shaking his head, he talks about a new appellation under discussion, Terra della Chianti Classico, which would have the same boundaries as the existing Chianti Classico DOCG appellation. Varietal wines from nontraditional grapes like Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon could be sold under the new appellation, something not possible under the DOCG.

This might seem to be of advantage to de Marchi, because he makes such wines, but he is skeptical. “Why do we need this? I think it only makes things more confusing for consumers, and the real purpose is simply to enable more wine to be sold as Chianti Classico,” he says.

He is no less worried about certain winemaking practices that he claims have become more common in the region during recent years. “There is no law forbidding the addition of powdered tannins to wine, although this alters their character and structure fundamentally. This is not winemaking, it’s cooking.”

It is a path he rejects categorically, insisting that Chianti Classico should be a wine with a “friendly drinkability,” rather than being pumped up artificially like an athlete on steroids.

His wines have already proved that friendly drinkability can be combined with depth and sophistication. His dramatic new vineyards, which are just beginning to come into production, are the next stage in his pursuit of the goal he has been following for more than a decade.

“I don’t just want to do better and better, but also to make wines that are more and more different from the others.”

* Pigott is a British journalist and wine writer.