Vigneto La Casuccia DOCG

Vigneto La Casuccia is a single-vineyard Chianti Classico Gran Selezione DOCG from Castello di Ama at Gaiole in Chianti, made in exceedingly limited quantities and only in the best vintages rather than every year. Its first release was 1985. The estate's

technical sheet for the 2018 describes a vineyard of 12.58 hectares, six of them planted in 1978 and the remainder in 2007, terraced to improve aspect and even out ripening, and divided into nine parcels, of which numbers 49, 46 and 45 typically supply this selection in the strongest vintages.

That sheet gives an altitude of 470 to 495 metres, clay and calcareous soil, a north-east to south-west exposure, vine density from 5,200 per hectare, and training split between single Guyot and open Lyra. Unusually for Chianti Classico, the blend includes a substantial Merlot component alongside Sangiovese: the 2018 was 80 per cent Sangiovese and 20 per cent Merlot at 13.5 per cent alcohol.

The two varieties are fermented separately with ambient yeasts in steel at 30 to 33 degrees, with manual pump-overs and a total cuvaison of 27 days for the Sangiovese and 25 for the Merlot. After the first racking the wine goes to barrique for malolactic

fermentation, the varieties are blended once that finishes, and it then matures around 14 months in fine-grain oak barriques, 40 per cent new and the rest one year old.