It’s crucial to seek this emotional response. Being open to how a wine makes you feel allows you to begin determining why. It may be just that you like flavors that remind you of cherry. Or it may go much deeper.

Your next assignment: Champagne

Welcome back to Wine School, where we try to peel away the assumptions about wine that so often impede confidence and understanding. Each month we pick a different type of wine to examine together. Over the course of several weeks the goal is to drink the wines in a relaxed, natural setting, with food, friends or family, and to pay attention to the wine itself and how we respond to it. Then we reconvene to discuss our experiences and share thoughts.

The subject is Chianti Classico, a perfect wine for evoking emotions. I say this because my own response to Chianti is so immediate. It’s a wine I love, made primarily from the sangiovese, a grape I love, and emblematic, if such a thing is possible, of the wines of all of Italy, a country I love. Good examples lead to pure joy. Bad ones make me angry. How could they mess up such a good thing?

Image Credit... Serge Bloch

Can a wine really express the character of a country? Sure, at least in a very general way. The wines of the Piedmont in the northwest will of course be different from those of Umbria in central Italy and those of Calabria in the southwest, to say nothing of Tuscany, home of Chianti Classico. Why, anywhere in Italy, the wines in one valley can be completely different from the wines in the next. But over all they share some very general characteristics, which Chianti Classico epitomizes.

First of all, Italian reds like Chianti Classico tend to be high in acidity and a trifle austere, which permits them to go beautifully with many foods. In Italy, the notion of drinking wine in a setting without food is vaguely horrifying. Italian wines tend to be subtle, without the powerful, high-volume fruit flavors that can overpower food (Amarone is an exception). And they emphasize harmony and balance: acidity is prominent but rarely shrill, fruit is present but not dominant and the sweetness implied by the fruit is often countered by an inherent bitterness. This for me captures Chianti Classico: gorgeous red cherry-like fruit with a bitter, leathery element; great acidity; and dusty, earthy tannins, all poised on a tightrope, with an internal tension that gives the wines energy.

All of these characteristics are contained within the sangiovese grape, the dominant red grape of central Italy. How they are expressed depends on where the grape is planted, how it is grown and how it is transformed into wine.