The Cellar
While developing the vineyards in Panzano, we also decided to build a new cellar at the heart of our property in Panzano in Chianti.
The façade of our state-of-the-art new cellar blends beautifully into the landscape. Its high-tech equipment enables us to realise our “ Passion for Taste “ by producing the highest quality Chianti Classico wines. The 2019 vintage was the first to be processed in our new cellar.
Thanks to our solar- and geothermalenergysystem our cellar facilities are powered by renewable energy.
The Harvest
One of the secrets of making a first-class wine is to harvest the grapes at precisely the right moment. We carefully harvest each bunch by hand in order to obtain a high-quality product right from the start. The grapes are then placed in small boxes to avoid damage during transport.
The sorting table
At the sorting table, we manually eliminate all foreign elements, such as leaf edges, small fragments of stem, and grapes that are not fully ripe. This sorting is essential for a high-quality wine, because it eliminates all particles from the grape juice that might disturb the fermentation.
Fermentation
After scrupulously selecting the grapes on the sorting table, the grape juice flows into the fermentation tanks. The first fermentation takes place here, i.e. the sugar content of the juice is converted into alcohol.
This process usually requires 2/3 weeks and must be carefully controlled, because the unregulated temperature of fermenting wine can be so high that the juice will spill out of the vat and fill the cellar with toxic gas.
Refinement
Upon completion of the first fermentation our wines, separated according to variety and plot of origin, are further refined in other cellar rooms for a period of 12 to 24 months. Here the second fermentation, i.e. “malolactic fermentation” takes place. During this period the wine is poured into oakwood vats of various sizes or cement or steel tanks depending upon the desired quality of the final product.
Before bottling our enologist will assemble the final blend for each label by mixing the wine from various plots into a unique, full-bodied Chianti Classico of highest quality.
Wine Library
Here the future merges with our past
On the ground floor of the cellar, we have created our wine library, where we store sample bottles of all of our wines every year. The first wine samples date back to 1993. The content of this room mirrors the past, present and future of Gagliole. These bottles are used only for professional winetasting.
