Selvapiana Chianti Rufina 2024

The Land

Before it made wine, Selvapiana was a lookout. The building at the heart of the estate began as one of the medieval watchtowers strung along the river Sieve to guard Florence's northeastern approach; the Renaissance enlarged it into a summer villa for Florentine nobles and for the bishops of Florence. The vineyards around it lie in Chianti Rufina, the smallest of the Chianti subzones at roughly 750 hectares, on slopes running up into the foothills of the Apennines. That nearness to the mountains is the point. Summers stay cooler here than farther south in Chianti and the swing between afternoon heat and night chill is wide, so Sangiovese ripens slowly across the whole season and holds its acid. Soils are the classic Tuscan pair, galestro and alberese, flaky schist over hard limestone. Rufina took its DOC in 1967 and DOCG in 1984, but Cosimo III de' Medici had already drawn part of its boundary in a proclamation of 1716.

The Wine

Ninety-five percent Sangiovese, the rest split among the traditional Rufina partners Canaiolo, Colorino and Malvasia Nera. Fruit comes from organically farmed parcels clustered around the villa, still carrying the names of the old sharecropping farms: Bucerchiale, Fornace, Casanova, Pesalova, Vigna al Pino. Fermentation is spontaneous, the estate having abandoned selected yeasts in 1992, and sulfur additions run well below what the cellar once used. Vinification happens in temperature-controlled stainless steel and in concrete casks carried over from the old cellar, with maceration lasting at least thirty days. Aging for this bottling leans on concrete, with smaller portions in steel and large foudre, so no oak flavor lands on the fruit. The 2024 season was long and largely dry: a rainy but cool spring kept mildew pressure low, veraison arrived early, and mid-August showers spared the vines real water stress. Federico Giuntini reported uniform ripening and healthy, thick-skinned grapes. Sour cherry, dried orange peel, tobacco leaf and iron, on fine-grained tannin and a spine of acid.

The People

Michele Giuntini, a Florentine banker, bought Selvapiana in 1827, and the family has held it since. His descendant Francesco Giuntini ran the estate from 1957 to 1997 and spent those four decades arguing that Rufina deserved a name of its own. He was among the first Tuscan producers to make his Riserva entirely from Sangiovese, and in 1979 he bottled the Bucerchiale parcel separately, a single-vineyard Chianti at a moment when almost nobody was making one. In 1978 he hired a young Franco Bernabei as consulting enologist; Bernabei still advises the estate. Since 1997 the property has been run by Federico and Silvia, adopted children of Francesco and children of Franco Masseti, who managed Selvapiana from 1953 to 1990. The estate covers 250 hectares, of which 58 are vines, 36 olive groves and 140 woodland, and it is certified organic, a conversion that began with the Fornace vineyard in 1990.

Food Pairing

Pour it with bistecca alla fiorentina, where the tannin cuts rendered fat and the acid resets the palate between bites of char. It works equally with pappa al pomodoro, the acid in the wine meeting the acid in the tomato as an equal rather than an opponent. Ribollita thick with cavolo nero and white beans gives the wine something earthy to lean into. And with a plate of prosciutto and pecorino toscano, the salt sharpens the red fruit while the tannin scrubs fat off the cheese. This is a weeknight bottle in the best sense, the Chianti you open on Tuesday because it costs less than the pasta it is standing next to, and then go looking for again on Wednesday.