Sangiovese

There’s an old viticultural maxim: The more a grapevine grows like a weed, the more it tastes like a weed. And that’s the crux of the challenge with Sangiovese. A naturally vigorous vine, its growth must be tamed with repeated pruning, fastidious canopy management, and choosing soil-poor vigor sites. At the outset of the burst of enthusiasm for Sangiovese in the 1980s, few California vintners bothered to put in the effort or hand the variety over to their best vineyards—not when Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir could fetch far greater returns. What’s more, California’s climate hastens Sangiovese’s ripening, which leaves its phenolics undeveloped/green and flavors truncated. 

During this heyday, however, everybody who made Sangiovese was jazzed and came out with an expensive rendition that tended to be mediocre and/or blended out with Bordelais grapes, à la the “Super Tuscan” category. The problem was that many of these wines were simply not very good, and consumers justifiably balked: why pay $35 when you can get a delicious Italian Chianti Classico for under $20? In the end, the whole category imploded, the market turned against it, and most of those early plantings of Sangiovese were pulled up. Yes, even Antinori with his high-profile Atlas Peak project essentially threw in the towel. Fast-forward several decades later, with better understanding of the grape’s needs in the vineyard and at the winery, and we are doing much better!

For more on the viticulture and viniculture of Sangiovese in California, read The Evaluation of the Intrinsic and Perceived Quality of Sangiovese Wines from California and Italy, by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. 

Does soil influence the flavor of the final wine?

Traditionalists answer unequivocally “Yes!” Soil is a key element of terroir, the natural environment in which the vines grow, along with climate (temperature, rainfall), topography (altitude, drainage, slope, aspect) and sunlight.

A more unorthodox view holds that the influence of soil on what you taste in the glass is a myth. Maynard Amerine and Ann Noble, two famous names at UC Davis, California’s premier wine school and wine research facility, conducted a study on the topic. Though the study is based on Chardonnay grapes, they concluded that the following holds true for all wine grapes: “no outstanding sensory differences were observed in wines produced from different soil type locations.” The key word is “sensory” (sight, smell, taste). They are not saying that the soil doesn’t affect vine behavior (yield, growth cycle, etc.). 

Early ampelographic research into Sangiovese began in 1906 with the work of Girolamo Molon. He discovered that the Italian grape known as "Sangiovese" was actually several "varieties” of clones, which he broadly classified as Sangiovese Grosso and Sangiovese Piccolo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the variety was a minor player in Tuscany and was called by its “real name,” Sangioveto. It has since become the most important grape of central Italy and grows under different names whose characteristics are also determined, in part, by which of the two sub-varieties or biotypes they are: Sangovese Grosso or Sangiovese Piccolo. The Sangiovese Grosso family includes clones grown in the Brunello region as well as clones known as Prugnolo Gentile and Sangiovese di Lamole grown in the Greve in Chianti region. Sangiovese Grosso, according to Molon, produced the highest quality wine, while the varieties in the Sangiovese Piccolo family, which included the majority of clones, produced wine of lesser quality.

The grape has a proclivity to evolve, a fact reflected in the close to 20 clones registered at France’s ENTAV and the 23 selections available via FPS at UC Davis.