Sometimes you taste a wine like Flaccianello and you keep saying to yourself: next time this is gonna be great! When this wine has just had the time to develop for a few more years in the bottle, then it’s gonna be a legend. I have had the fortune to taste Flaccianello from Fontodi in a wide range of vintages, mostly young. And when we talk about Flaccianello, then everything below 15 years is young. A few times this legend has WOWed me. This time was one of them.
1990 Fontodi, Flaccianello IGT Toscana – the nose is stunning; all the elements of a great and developed wine. Here we don’t just talk a great aged Sangiovese, we talk a huge wine. This could initially be a great Bordeaux or the best of the new world. Mostly dried fruit aromas and then sweet plum and that extra level and tobacco and chocolate. The taste was close to perfection, not a missing beat. Great fruit, sweet tannins that gave you the much talked about silky feeling and then a close to perfect finish where the fruit was just singing its song. Thank you for serving this my dear colleague.
Flaccianello is one of the most classic 100 % Sangiovese wines produced. Made with Sangiovese fruit from the best vineyards in the Panzano area in Chianti Classico. It has been made since 1981 and back then it was not allowed to bottle a pure Sangiovese as Chianti Classico. Giovanni Manetti still sticks to the old IGT classification for this wine.
I also had the pleasure of tasting this beautiful wine in the 1997 vintage last year, out of a magnum bottle, with Giovanni Manetti. It was also very good, but not just as open and impressive as this one.
Disclaimer: I work for the Danish importer of Fontodi and normally I prefer Giovannis Vigna del Sorbo to the Flaccianello.