A wine for a very special occasion, this is a Chianti that really is a grand selection of the very best of the produce that this excellent estate produces.
This is a dark and brooding wine that has a wonderfully intense nose of dark fruit, crushed violets and an array of culinary spices. Bestowed with a distinct freshness on account of the high quantity of fossil and sandstone content in the soils, this is still a long and mouth-filling wine, complete with rich tannins and a profound depth, all wonderfully balanced.
As it ages it will continue to soften and the fruit flavours will gently soften and mature, in line with the tannins and colour. Wine made like this is homage to nature; there is so much to be received when it's treated with respect.
The Italians actually have a category for wines like this: "vini di meditazione". Meditation wine.
Gran Selezione wines have had a mixed reception and some producers have side stepped the intention of the designation by exploiting loopholes and making monstrous, oaky and highly-extracted reds that don't show the glory of the region. This is not one of those wines! With no small barrique use, no toasted oak and a simple, yet risky, selection of the best vines from one of their single vineyards: the only star in this show is the quality of the grapes. This is a natural, warts-and-all approach to winemaking that implicitly trusts the vineyard team to do the required work so that the winemaker has really very little to do at all.
Fermented in 75-hectolitre concrete tanks using indigenous yeasts, the wine is made from only Sangiovese in purezza. These grapes come from just one vineyard, the Sessina, which is the highest altitude of all of the Dievole vineyards at 420 metres above sea level. Following fermentation, the wine ages in 41-hectolitre barrels for two years and then for one year more in bottle before being released.
Dievole is one of the selection of very fine, potential-heavy estates owned by Argentinean Billionaire Alejandro Bulgheroni. Bought in 2012, various programmes have been executed in the decade and a bit since. Beginning with complete analysis of the vineyard's structures and potential, replanting according to the best location for each of the indigenous varieties, organic vineyard conversion (completed, with certification, in 2017) and a superb and quite radical attitude to the use of oak barrels, the winery now produces wines that are about as pure an expression of the Chianti terroir that they occupy as any other that you could imagine.
The oak use... this is very interesting. The barrels that the winery use are all very large and come from specially selected French forests and they are all very large, holding between 41 and 50 hectolitres each. They are untoasted. This means that though you will sense the familiar notes of spice aromas on the nose, they are really subtle and almost entirely dissipate on the palate, leaving wines that are really clean and, most importantly, clearly show the quality and character of the fruit from which the wines are made.
Who's behind this radical regime? A few of the brightest and most celebrated consultants going - it seems that the Bulgheroni group functions in this manner, with the identification of very fine estates and then the sourcing of the best experts available to extract the potential from each. In this case it is the extraordinary Alberto Antonini who has led the charge and the clarity that you'd find in his other consultant posts over the years - from Col d'Orcia and Antinori to Au Bon Climat, Seghesio and his own family estate in Poggiotindo - is present in each of these wines too.
The future of Dievole is clearly very bright and will only improve with the increasing age of their vines and the unveiling of the characteristics that each vineyard site possesses.
The history of Dievole is quite incredible. The estate has ancient roots dating to 1090, but for the following 850 years or so, didn't make any wine. Its strategic positioning in Castelnuovo Berardenga meant that it occupied a key place along the politically important trade routes between Florence and Sienna. The name "Dievole" officially appeared for the first time in a contract selling the estate for "two capons, three loaves of bread, and 6 silver Lucca denari" - oh for such times... and then again the estate appears in papers kept by the noblewoman Ildegonda Camaiori where the estate was her wedding gift from her husband Count Giulio Terrosi Vagnoli in 1870s Tuscany (makes a Le Creuset pot seem rather small), and the detail is wonderful: the whole estate cost 361,632 Lira (just shy of €200 in 2025). But the most important part of the papers from a wine perspective is that they show the ledger of balances giving the information pertaining to all of the peasant families, who at the time worked each section of land-holding entrusted to them. Many descendants of those families named in the papers from the 1870s are still working and living in Chianti today.
In Italian, the English phrase "God Willing" translates as "Dio Vuole" and this is widely believed to be the manner in which the name of the Dievole estate came about: if it is God's will, the estate will...
Region: Chianti Classico
Country: Italy
Grape(s): Sangiovese, Canaiolo
Style: Svelte, Smooth, Silky, Perfumed, Organic, Medium Bodied, Iconic, Elegant, Complex, Balanced
Best food matches: Venison, Steak, Roasts, Red Meats, Mature Cheeses, Lamb, Hard Cheeses, Game, Fine Dining, Duck
Alcohol: 14%
