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68 LEXPERT MAGAZINE | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK WINE ON SEPTEMBER 24, 1716, Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, demarcated the four growing communes of the Chianti region. In case their names have slipped your mind, they are: Chianti Classico, Pomina/Chianti Rufina, Carmignano and Valdarno di Sopra. With one stroke of his quill, Cosimo III established the world's first wine appellation, predating by 40 years the setting of the boundaries for port wine production in the Douro Valley by Por- tugal's prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal. If you ask a Canadian to name one Italian wine, I'll lay odds the answer will be Chianti. And for Canadians of a certain age, the name will immediately conjure up images of bulbous, straw-cov- ered bottles that ended up in neighbourhood trattorias caked with lava-like flows of candle wax. e Italian name for the straw-corseted bottle is fiasco, and that word in English — ironically — summed up the state of the scan- dal-ridden Chianti industry in the 1950s and '60s. at was the era when the white grape Trebbiano made up to 30 per cent of many mass-market Chiantis and when oceans of dubious wine, as palat- able as red ink, flowed around the world. Apart from downright fraud, much of the problem had to do with the original recipe for the blend. is formula was written in stone in the mid-19th century by Baron Bettino Ricasoli, who would later become prime minister of the kingdom of Italy. Rica- soli stated that Chianti should be a blend of 70 per cent Sangiovese grapes, 15 per cent Canaiolo and 15 per cent Malvasia Blanca. Cynical wine writers have suggested that the stated proportions — particularly the inclusion of 15 per cent of the white Malvasia — reflected the percentages of these varieties that the baron grew in his vineyard at the time. White grapes did nothing to enhance the flavour or the aging potential of Chianti. And it wasn't until 1971 that a seminal wine made by Marquis Piero Antinori sparked a revolution in the region and caused a headache for the regulators. e wine was Tignanello and it created a new category, dubbed Super Tuscan. Not only did Antinori and his oenologist, the late Giacomo Tachis, dispense with white grapes entirely, but in place of Canaiolo they blended their Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon. To add to the heresy, they aged the wine not in the traditional large, oval, Slavonian oak barrels called botte, but in the much smaller, new 225-litre French barriques. Because it did not conform to denominazione di origine cont- rollata (DOC) Italian wine classification regulations, Tignanello could not call itself Chianti and had to be designated on the label as a humble vino da tavola (table wine), even though it was priced higher than other producers' Chianti Classico Riserva offerings. | DETOURS | A Short History of Chianti The growing regions of one of Italy's most popular and enduring wines were demarcated 300 years ago