Historic Chianti

Between past and future

The origins of the term Chianti is rather debatable: for some it derives from «Clante», the name of a person of Etruscan origin; others believe it comes from «clango», a Latin verb which reproduced the sound of horns and announced the hunting sessions on the territory.
If the origin is uncertain, the information which leads us to declare that inside the classic Chianti area which we all consider today, it is possible to define a limited area, a more restricted nucleus which we could call Historic Chianti is certain.
It is a boundary which embeds its roots in the Early Middle Ages. In 1250, in fact, the Florentine Republic divided the territory into independent jurisdictions, called Leghe. Among these, the Lega del Chianti ratified the birth of a district which today would correspond to the towns of Castellina, Gaiole and Radda in Chianti. It was a radical choice, motivated by the fact that for morphological and scenic aspects, the limited area could not include territories with characteristics different to those that marked the main Chianti ridge.
Centuries later, precisely in 1924, at the moment of its constitution, the Classic Chianti Wine Consortium extended the territorial definition of Chianti, geographically marking an area which from the outskirts of Siena reaches almost as far as Florence.
Alimenta, which represents three companies settled in the Historic Chianti region –Rocca di Castagnoli and Castello di San Sano in Gaiole in Chianti and Tenuta di Capraia in Castellina in Chianti- pursues the ambitious project of remarking the characteristic of the wine products distributed through the diffusion and knowledge of a historic particularly wine-suited territory. This is also done through the promotion of studies on agriculture and wine which address and valorise, as has happened in other important regions of Italy, ancient and specific experiences which have given birth to Chianti wine.