Italy · Chianti Hills

Ricasoli

Barone Ricasoli makes Chianti Classico at Castello di Brolio, a fortified hill estate in Gaiole in Chianti where the family has owned land since 1141. Baron Francesco Ricasoli repurchased the brand in 1993 and runs a plot-by-plot Sangiovese programme across almost 240 hectares of vineyard.

The producer

Brolio is one of the largest privately held estates in Tuscany, but most of it is forest. The 1,200-hectare property around Castello di Brolio is 70% woods and Mediterranean scrub, which leaves almost 240 hectares of Sangiovese parcels sitting on south and southwest hillsides between 220 and 500 metres above sea level in the southeastern corner of the Chianti Classico zone. Francesco Ricasoli, the 32nd Baron and current owner, mapped 19 distinct soil types across those parcels and built a vinification programme around the differences: each plot harvested separately, each fermented in its own small steel vat, filled by gravity to keep extraction gentle.

The range runs from Brolio Chianti Classico, the estate entry wine made from 95% Sangiovese and 5% Colorino, to four Gran Selezione wines at the top tier, three of them single-vineyard bottlings from the 2022 harvest. The Sangiovese grown at these elevations gives firm, ripe tannin, red and dark cherry fruit, and an acid line that keeps the wines fresh across their range. Brolio Chianti Classico, aged 12 months in medium barrels, is the most direct expression: open violet and cherry aromas, tannin that is present but already resolved, and enough freshness to drink without years of cellaring. The Gran Selezione wines need more time, but they show what 19 soil types and plot separation actually produce when given room.

Known for

Chianti Classico DOCG, Sangiovese, Gran Selezione single-vineyard wines

Notable facts

The story

The Buyback, 1993

By the early 1990s, Francesco Ricasoli had been running the Brolio winery for three years. He knew the vineyards, the cellar, the harvest rhythms. What he did not own was the name on the bottle. Barone Ricasoli, the brand his ancestor Bettino had made synonymous with Chianti, had been sold out of family hands and passed through Seagram and then Hardy's. Francesco negotiated the repurchase in 1993 and completed it while carrying the full operational and financial risk of a return to private family ownership. He had been managing a winery he did not own, watching a name eight centuries in the family's possession operate under someone else's label. When the transaction closed, the 32nd Baron owned both the estate and the brand again, and the soil mapping, clonal research, and plot-by-plot vinification programme that would shape the next three decades of Brolio wine could begin in earnest.

From the atlas

Barone Ricasoli

At A Glance

The Producer

Barone Ricasoli makes Chianti Classico from Sangiovese grown on one of the largest and most historically rooted private estates in Tuscany. The property is Castello di Brolio, a fortified hilltop in Gaiole in Chianti, and the family's written link to it goes back to 1141. Most of what surrounds the vineyards is still forest: 70% of the 1,200-hectare property is woods and Mediterranean scrub, which leaves almost 240 hectares of vineyard parcels sitting in a landscape that has changed very little in outline since the medieval period.

Francesco Ricasoli, the 32nd Baron, runs the estate. He began managing production in 1990 and negotiated the repurchase of the Barone Ricasoli brand in 1993, returning it to family hands after a period of outside corporate ownership. His signature contribution since then has been a systematic plot-by-plot research programme: each parcel harvested separately, each vinification tracked, 19 soil types mapped and understood.

Place

Gaiole in Chianti sits in the southeastern part of the Chianti Classico zone, in the province of Siena. Chianti Classico is the DOCG appellation between Florence and Siena, and it is where Sangiovese produces the wines most closely associated with the name Chianti on a label. Gaiole is higher and cooler than the northwestern corners of the zone, and the Brolio estate occupies the southern flank of this subzone, with vineyards on hillsides at between 220 and 500 metres, mostly facing south or southwest.

That elevation range matters for Sangiovese. At the lower end, the grape ripens fully and gives wine with open, accessible cherry fruit and firm but tractable tannin. At the higher parcels, harvest comes later and the fruit is tighter, with more acid backbone and ageing potential. The altitude variation is one reason the estate runs separate parcel vinification: the same grape from the same property behaves differently depending on where it grew.

Soil And Site

Ricasoli's zoning research identified 19 distinct soil types across the Brolio property. The variation includes the galestro, a crumbly, pale schist common across Chianti Classico, alongside alberese, a harder clay-limestone mix that holds water differently and ripens Sangiovese more slowly. The interplay between these soil types, the slope angles, and the elevation range gives the estate its internal complexity. It is why a single estate can produce a broad entry wine and three distinct single-vineyard Gran Selezione bottlings and have meaningful differences between them rather than cosmetic ones.

Story

The name most associated with Chianti's modern formula is Bettino Ricasoli, twice prime minister of the newly unified Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Working from Brolio, Bettino developed a Sangiovese-led blend formula that became the basis of Chianti production for decades. It was his experiments on the estate, his insistence on Sangiovese as the backbone, that gave Chianti its dominant grape character.

By the late twentieth century, the estate brand had passed through corporate hands: Seagram owned it, then Hardy's. Francesco Ricasoli had begun managing the winery in 1990, effectively running production while the brand operated under outside ownership. In 1993, he completed the repurchase. What followed was a reconfiguration of how the estate worked: soil mapping, clonal selection from Sangiovese vines grown at Brolio, and a shift toward plot-by-plot vinification. The Gran Selezione tier, which designates the appellation's highest category in Chianti Classico, gave the single-vineyard wines a legal home when the category was introduced. By the 2022 harvest, the estate was producing four Gran Selezione wines: three single-vineyard bottlings and one estate-level blend under the Castello di Brolio name.

Vineyards And Cellar

The estate avoids chemical weedkillers and pesticides across its vineyard area, using fertilization and parasite-control methods it describes as stricter than standard organic principles. Each vineyard plot is harvested separately when it reaches its own ripeness, so the cellar receives parcels across an extended harvest window rather than one large intake.

In the cellar, the vats are filled by gravity rather than by pump, which limits mechanical force on the grape skins and extracts more gently. Fermentation takes place in small steel vats, one per plot, so the character of each parcel is tracked through vinification without being averaged into larger batches. After fermentation, maturation moves into barrels of various sizes and oak barriques, with the ageing duration and vessel type varied by wine tier. Some cuvees then go into extended bottle ageing under temperature control before release.

The Brolio entry wine spends 12 months in medium-sized barrels. The Gran Selezione wines take longer, and the Castello di Brolio flagship draws from selected parcels across the property before its own extended maturation.

Wines

The range is structured across three Chianti Classico tiers: Annata, Riserva, and Gran Selezione. Sangiovese drives all of them.

Brolio Chianti Classico is the estate entry wine. In the 2023 vintage it is 95% Sangiovese and 5% Colorino, aged 12 months in medium barrels. It gives violet and cherry aromas, tannin that is firm without being austere, and enough freshness to drink within a few years of the harvest. It is built for breadth rather than depth.

The Chianti Classico Riserva tier sits between the Annata and the Gran Selezione: longer ageing, more concentrated fruit, tannin that requires more time to integrate.

At the top, the Gran Selezione tier produces four wines from the 2022 harvest. Castello di Brolio is the estate-level blend at this tier, selected from the best parcels across the property, with vinification and maturation that extends well beyond the Annata and Riserva wines. The three single-vineyard Gran Selezione wines each come from a named parcel and express the differences the 19-soil-type mapping is designed to capture: one parcel's Sangiovese might lean toward darker, firmer fruit with deeper colour from clay-heavy soils, another toward brighter acidity and finer-grained tannin from galestro.

In The Glass

Across the range, the Sangiovese grown at Brolio shows a consistent character: red and dark cherry fruit, firm but not aggressive tannin, and an acid line that keeps the wine from feeling heavy even when the body is full. The elevation and the south and southwest exposures push ripeness far enough for the tannin to be ripe rather than green, while the altitude ensures the wines retain freshness into the finish.

The entry Brolio opens with violet and cherry, the tannin grips early in the mouth and softens through the mid-palate, and the finish is clean and short. The Riserva level adds concentration and a denser mid-palate, with tannin that needs two or three years in bottle to fully open. The Gran Selezione wines carry more extract, darker fruit, and a finish that holds for long enough to make ageing worthwhile. The single-vineyard bottlings show how differently the same grape can read when the soil shifts: one might give spiced, iron-edged Sangiovese with tight, chewy tannin; another a softer, more perfumed wine with red fruit and a longer acid fade.

A Bottle To Understand It

Brolio Chianti Classico is the right first bottle from this estate. It is made from Sangiovese and a small portion of Colorino, both grown on the Brolio property, aged 12 months in medium-sized barrels and released with the fruit still primary. The cherry and violet aromas are immediate, the tannin is present but already resolved enough to drink without food pairings doing heavy work, and the acid line gives it grip without sharpness. It is Chianti Classico in its most straightforward form, without the extended maceration and long maturation that make the Gran Selezione wines less accessible in their first few years. Once you know what the estate does with Sangiovese at this level, the single-vineyard bottlings above it make more sense.

Anecdote

By the early 1990s, Francesco Ricasoli had been running the Brolio winery for three years. He knew the vineyards, the cellar, the harvest rhythms. What he did not own was the name on the bottle. Barone Ricasoli, the brand his ancestor Bettino had made synonymous with Chianti, had been sold out of family hands and had passed through Seagram and then Hardy's. Francesco negotiated the repurchase in 1993 and completed it while carrying the full operational and financial risk of a return to private family ownership. He had been effectively managing a winery he did not own, watching a name eight centuries in the family's possession operate under someone else's label. When the transaction closed, the 32nd Baron owned both the estate and the brand again, and the soil mapping, clonal research, and plot-by-plot vinification programme that would shape the next three decades of Brolio wine could begin in earnest.

Final Word

Brolio is a large Chianti Classico estate with an unusual combination: recorded ownership going back to 1141, a systematic modern research programme, and a range architecture that runs from an accessible entry wine to four distinct Gran Selezione expressions at the top. Francesco Ricasoli's 1993 repurchase is the pivot around which everything since has been built. The Brolio Chianti Classico shows what the estate does at its most direct; the single-vineyard Gran Selezione wines show what plot-by-plot vinification and 19 soil types can produce when the work is given time.

Sources

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