Today I’m tasting one of my favorite wines. This is a Chianti Classico from Antinori, but it’s called Pèppoli.
Pèppoli was one of the first single-vineyard Chianti Classicos Antinori put out. It came along in the mid-eighties, right around the same time as the Badia a Passignano estate wine, and it was meant to be an entry-level Chianti Classico. They already had the Marchese Antinori, which was the cat daddy. Tignanello was obviously out. But Pèppoli was meant to be a gateway into what Chianti Classico could do at the table on a daily basis.
Which brings me to something you’re going to hear me talk about a lot: eighty-fifteen-five.
Eighty percent of the time we’re eating basic everyday food, and the wine that goes with that food should be simple and complement the plate. Nothing exaggerated, nothing over the top. We’re looking for balance. That’s weekdays.
Fifteen percent of the time, maybe we’re out at a restaurant eating something we couldn’t make at home. That’s actually how I judge where I want to go out to eat — I go places where I can’t replicate the food in my own kitchen. Bottom line. So that’s the fifteen percent, and if we’re upgrading the food, we upgrade the wine. We still want balance. We still want the pairing to work. We’re just stepping it up a bit.
And then five percent of the time, the wine is the occasion. It’s like when I go to Fogo de Chão once a year and eat more meat in one sitting than I will the following month combined. That’s my five percent. Extrapolate that to wine and you get the splurge bottle. The single-vineyard Barolo. That’s where you’re spending for something, and at that point it doesn’t really matter what you’re eating. It’s about the wine.
But eighty percent of the time — and everybody’s eighty percent is different. For some people that’s a five-dollar Trader Joe’s wine. For other people it’s twenty, thirty, forty dollars. Depending on how you roll.
Back to Pèppoli. I saw something recently where Antinori was voted the number two most respected winery in the world. I’m not sure who was number one. In my book it’s Antinori. They’ve been around six hundred-plus years, so they’re not new to this. And I have never, in all my years, had a bad bottle of wine from Antinori. That’s saying something when you think about the amount of wine they produce.
So: Pèppoli, mid-eighties, the gateway Chianti Classico. A lighter style. Take everything in a classic Chianti Classico — dark cherry, cherry, dusty leather, tannin. That’s the benchmark. Pèppoli is all of that on a lighter scale. The violets and dried flowers you get from Sangiovese in Chianti Classico are there, but Pèppoli showcases the red fruit more than the dark fruit. The leathery bits are dialed back, and so are the tannins. What runs through all great Chianti Classico, and certainly through all of Antinori’s wines, is that crisp acidity from start to finish.
So let’s see what we have here. This is the 2024 Pèppoli, the most recent release.
Beautiful nose. Crushed red cherry, a little bit of black pepper, black cherries coming underneath. Raspberry and black cherry taking the lead. Some dried flowers. Hints of leather, but clearly not leading with that — clearly leading with crushed red fruit instead of dark fruit.
It’s just impeccable wine. 2024, good vintage. But this is textbook. Not only is it textbook Chianti Classico, it’s textbook Pèppoli.
That’s one of the things I have mad respect for with Antinori. Each individual wine distinguishes itself within the lineup. They’re not making a bunch of good wine and slapping different labels on it. There’s a methodology and a style that goes into each of their wines.
A couple of years ago I was in Italy tasting at the Consorzio Chianti Classico — over a hundred wines, all blind. Antinori’s wines came out at the top of my tasting notes. They were in the A tier of everything I tasted. They always rise to the top. So if you’re at a restaurant or a store, in a pinch, no time to really research — you cannot go wrong picking up a bottle of wine from Antinori. Plain and simple.
It keeps opening up. Just a little bit of leather, teasing you with it, but it’s all about the red fruit and the dried violets on the nose. You get a little leather in the mouth, and then it goes right back to red cherry, black cherry, dried flower, and a little bitter finish — which is what you want in Sangiovese. The acid is all there. With food, this is just going to sing. I can’t wait to get back to it later.
That’s Pèppoli. One of my favorites. It’s been around forever and it is the gateway.
If you haven’t tasted a whole lot of Chianti Classico, the styles are all over the board — from the lighter end, which tends to be the northern part of the zone, all the way down to Castelnuovo Berardenga in the southern tier, where you get the big, strapping, leathery hammers. All of them have, or should have, that streak of leather, cherry and high acid running through them.
This is just a textbook example. If you want a Chianti Classico that pairs with all kinds of different food, pick up Pèppoli. It’s about twenty-five bucks. Can’t go wrong.
Until next time — drink well, stay well.