THREE DECADES OF SANGIOVESE
We recently conducted a vertical tasting of 30 years of Sangiovese at Coriole.
The first release for us was 1987 and the 2019 has just hit the shelves. It has been 35 years of experimentation with clone, viticulture, winemaking and marketing.
The journey continues but we feel each year our wines improve as does the consistency. Sangiovese is a very different wine to make than shiraz. It is a challenge from a viticultural point of view. It doesn’t like cool wet weather and although it performs well in a Mediterranean climate, careful canopy management is essentially to protect the fruit from sun burn.
In most cases we also find that a blend from multiple sangiovese vineyards is is better than any single block, (aside from the odd year when a tiny amount of Vita Reserve Sangiovese is made from the original vineyard). This is in stark contrast to shiraz where quite often single vineyards beg to be bottled as individual lots rather than blending. The original wines in this tasting would’ve been single clone and single vineyard (some of the early wines would’ve had a small proportion of cabernet or shiraz blended in as well). For the last 15 years the wines are all multi clone (7-8 clones used) and multi-vineyard (up to 6 different vineyards across McLaren Vale). Should you have earlier sangiovese vintages in your cellar the below may be a useful guide - or if you have any bottles of the vintages not listed please contact us as we'd love to purchase them from you.
