Chianti - Defined

Chianti—A low priced yet good Italian wine with a Burgundy flavor. Chianti wines and sparkling wines enjoy a favorable reputation in the United States among consumers, and there are Italian vermoulbs that are as well known here as in the country from whence they come.

Chianti, made from Chianti grapes, is dry, mellow, and not as heavy in body as Burgundy; it is put up in the straw-covered flask characteristic of Italian Chianti. Riesling,

High-class Wines are wines which are produced in certain spots, or rather which are obtained from certain varieties of grapes, grown in especially favorable conditions of climate, and more particularly of soil, compared with those of the circumjacent vineyards.

Wines which also, it may be said, are the product of an almost infinite series of careful treatments, beginning in the vineyard and continued through the vintage and during the whole time, which is certainly not brief, of their conservation.

Wines, in short, which unite in themselves all the characteristics and qualities which should be found in fine wine, combined with the most extraordinary delicacy and fragrance of aroma and freshness on the palate.

An Italian wine that belongs to this class is the Chianti di Brolio—of the French wines of Bordeaux, or more precisely of the Médoc, Chateau-Lafite, and Chateau-la-Tour, distinguished from the former by a slightly heavier body, a more pronounced flavor, and aroma.

It may very possibly be that some of the wines of Chianti exhibit qualities which place them, so to speak, in rank with the Chianti di Brolio; then from the second they must be promoted to the first class, as is the case with Chateau-la-Tour, which, though somewhat different, is deemed worthy to stand in rank with Chateau-Lafite and the other two, Chateaux-Margaux and Chateau-Haut-Brion, which together form the four "grands vins," high-class wines of the Gironde.