Costco Kirkland Chianti Challenge (The origin of the word Fiasco, Chiantis worth drinking, Sangiovese)

Show Notes

Episode 77: Costco Kirkland Chianti Challenge   00:00

Hello! And welcome to The Wine Pair Podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and my wine pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are The Wine Pair! 

Ok, a quick orientation for those of you who may be new to the podcast - in each episode we learn about, taste and give our honest review of three wines that are reasonably priced - meaning under $20 each -  and should be easy for you to find. And, our podcast is made for people like us - people who love wine, but want to learn more about wine, find new wines to explore, and just feel more confident when we talk about and order wines. So, if that sounds like you, you are in the right place - and, we invite you to taste a Chianti or some other wine you may have along with us while you listen as a fun way to participate in the podcast! And we are proud to say that we are officially recommended by the editors of Decanter Magazine from their October issue, who call us fun, irreverent, chatty, and entertaining. 

Alright, Carmela, we are back with one of our popular Costco Kirkland brand wine challenge episodes, and in these episodes we choose a Kirkland Signature wine, which are very popular and well priced, and taste it side-by-side with other similar wines to see how it stacks up. 

In the past, we have done Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, but this week, we are going to do a taste test for their Chianti Classico Riserva. 

Now, many of you listeners know that Carmela and I are Italian, and I have mentioned this many times that my father-in-law, Carmela’s dad, was really the one who introduced me to wine, and one of the first wines I remember drinking with your dad was Chianti.

Chianti is a very popular wine made in Tuscany, Italy, which is the area of Italy where amazing cities like Florence and Siena and Pisa are located. But Chianti has not always had a great reputation. For a quick bit of history, Chianti became popular in the US in the 60’s and 70’s, but in the 80’s it starting being overproduced, and the quality of the wine began to dip, and so for a long while, Chianti had a bad reputation. And, in particular, those bottles of chianti wrapped in straw or with straw baskets became sort of synonymous with cheap, crappy wine. 

Now here is a question for you - do you know what those wine bottles are called, Carmela? That style of wine bottles is called a fiasco. Seriously. And the term fiasco, meaning a disaster, is related to the wine bottle, which is something I never knew. 

There are several theories behind the origin of the connotation of word fiasco with a disaster, but one story I like that I found online is from a website called “World Wide Words” - which we have a link to in our show notes which you can find on our website if you go to this episode - explains that fiasco is related to the English word flask. 

Now the phrase “fare fiasco” which means “to make a flask or bottle” started to be used among Italian theater and opera people in the 1700’s, and came to mean to have a bad performance. It’s supposed to be related to the fact that the chianti bottles needed the wicker basket to keep them upright because they had a tendency to spill or break.

But, if anyone knows another story that they think is true about where the meaning of fiasco as a disaster came from, let us know.

Over the last couple of decades, Chianti has definitely had a resurgence in popularity and respect, and so we are going to talk a little bit about Chianti, where it comes from, the grapes it is made from, and other fun stuff, and then we are going to taste a the Costco Kirkland brand Chianti to see how it compares to other well rated and also reasonably priced Chianti’s to see how it compares . . .

But first . . . we have to do our shameless plug.

I am going to change it up just a little bit to keep things interesting. Thanks to all of you who have been leaving ratings and reviews - we really appreciate it, and if you leave a review, in the review itself let us know if there is a wine we have talked about or reviewed in our podcast that you have changed your mind about - we think that would be fun, and we’ll talk about it in the show.

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If you want to get our show notes and links to articles, or reach out to us, please head to our website The Wine Pair Podcast dotcom, and follow us on Instagram and send us any fun or funny comments. We would love to hear from you!

And, as we do every week, we’ll tell you someone we think you should tell about The Wine Pair Podcast - and we are adjusting it a bit to focus on a trigger word. When you hear this trigger word we want you to think of The Wine Pair Podcast, and immediately tell the person you are talking to that they need to listen to our podcast - and that word is fiasco. And, guaranteed that you will hear the word fiasco in the next couple days. 

ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(bottle) 
• https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-fia1.htm 

Topic: A Brief Primer on Chianti 09:09

Ok, so Chianti is typical of many European wines where the wine is named after the region and not the grape. In reality, Chianti wine is made from, or mostly from, the grape Sangiovese. More on that later, but Chianti only needs to be made from 70-80% Sangiovese to be considered a Chianti. 

On a side note, you may be starting to see more and more Sangiovese being grown in different parts of the world, including other parts of Italy, the US, Argentina, and elsewhere. Now, there is a famous wine made in Tuscany that is also made from Sangiovese called Brunello di Montalcino, and that is one of the most expensive wines in the world, and it is made from 100% Sangiovese.And there are some very good wines made from Sangiovese also in Italy, that are very good, but can’t be called Chianti because they are not made in the Chianti area. But those are topics for another episode. 

Back to Chianti. Chianti is again made in the Chianti region of Italy, which was designated a DOC in the 1960s, which means that the government guarantees that the wine is from a particular area and made in a particular way. Within Chianti, there are actually different areas where different levels of quality of Chianti are made. 

The general wine from the area is called Chianti, and must be made from at least 70% Sangiovese, and other grapes can include Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, Canaiolo Nero and Colorino. 

Now, because of the challenges with the quality of Chianti that was being made in the 1980’s, they created a new designation for Chianti and ratcheted up the expectations of the quality that the wines would deliver. In 1984, they upgraded Chianit to a DOCG, and they added a second designation called Chianti Classico which is its own DOCG in 1996.

Chianti Classico actually has higher requirements than plain Chianti, and has to be 80% Sangiovese, it has to be aged at least ten to twelve months before being released, and of course has to be from the Chianti Classico designated region.

There is also Chianti Riserva which has to be aged from 2-3 years, and a new even higher quality called Gran Selezione which is supposed to come from the best vineyards and has to be aged at least 30 months. 

Now, I am a fan of Chianti, but I have to say I am not always the biggest fan. I sometimes find that Sangiovese made in other areas of Italy I like a little better, like those from the Emilia-Romagna region. I can find Chianti to sometimes be a bit astringent, and I do think that it is definitely a wine that needs to be matched with food. Sometimes by itself, it can be a little sharp because it can be so acidic, but that is also what makes it such a good food wine. 

And, there are some great foods that pair well with Chianti, and yes, most of them are Italian. But think of things like bruschetta (yes, it’s pronounced bruschetta not brew-shetta), pizza, a rich lentil soup or a pasta with beans in it, or a cheese and meat board with different types of salumi and Italian cheese, and in Tuscany there are a lot of sheep’s milk cheeses with various names that have Pecorino in them, that can have a nice sharpness to them. 

Now Carmela, you spent some time in college in Tuscany which I know was a long, long time ago, and we’ve traveled there a few times, so what do you think of as Tuscan foods?

Well, now I am getting hungry, so I think it’s time to learn a little more about the specific wines we are drinking today. 

ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://vinepair.com/articles/everything-you-never-knew-about-chianti/ 
• https://italianwinecentral.com/denomination/chianti-docg/ 
• https://italianwine.guide/regions-en-gb/toscany-en-gb/chianti-docg-en-gb/ 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chianti 
• https://www.jjbuckley.com/wine-knowledge/blog/a-short-history-of-chianti-%28to-enjoy-with-your-next-glass%29/1275

Chianti Wines We Chose for This Episode 18:07

As usual, all of the wines we have chosen for this episode are under $20, and all of them should be relatively easy to find because, first of all, one of the wines is from Costco, and although I picked up the other two at wine.com, I know that Costco has sold one of them in the past, too. And, you can find Chianti, Chianti Classico, and Chianti Classico Riserva basically anywhere.

I also wanted the other Chiantis that I chose to be wines that had ratings from reputable reviewers - which to us means reviewers we like - which is not going to include James Suckling, by the. Ironically, the Costco Kirkland Chianti was reviewed by James Suckling, and, in a big surprise, got a 92 rating from him. And, yes, I am being sarcastic. 

The first wine we are going to drink is, yes, the Costco Kirkland Chianti Classico Riserva. Again, this is one step beyond Chianti Classico, and so it was made in the Chianti Classico region and because it is a Riserva, it has to be aged for 2-3 years. 

Although Costco will not always say who makes their wines, according to a website I found called Liquor Laboratory, which you can find a link to in our show notes, their Chianti Classico is made by the Villa Cafaggio Estate winery team and imported by Ethica Wines. And, the wine bottle says as much as well. 

We are drinking the 2019 version, which is the one that James Suckling gave a 92 rating to. There are a few other online sites, like The Reverse Wine Snob that often rate Costco wines, and they rated this wine highly, and noted Villa Caffagio made the best $10 Chianti Classico they have ever tasted. They also said that the 2020 version is crap, so, be on the lookout for this version. And, if this is a good wine, at $8.99 it should be a screaming deal.

The second wine we are drinking today is called Castello di Albola Chianti Classico, and it was given a 90 rating by Wine Spectator. From some of the information I found online, this winery makes sustainable and organic wine, and they are a relatively new production house, having been around for about 40 years. So, while that doesn’t sound super new, in a place like Tuscany where they have been making wine for century after century, that is a pretty recent acquisition, and so not a huge shock that they are using more modern practices. 

The third wine we are going to taste today is called Castello di Querceto Chianti Classico, and it is also a 2020 Chianti Classico like that last one. However, one difference with this wine is that it is not 100% Sangiovese. It is 92% Sangiovese and the final 8% is a combination of some local Tuscan grapes, namely Canaiolo, Colorino, Mammolo, and Ciliegiolo.

And they have also been making this wine at Castello di Querceto for over 100 years. The Chianti Classico is aged in oak for at least 6 months, and then in the bottle for at least 2 months before it is released. 

So, we have two Chianti Classicos to compare to the Costco Kirkland brand which is also a Chianti Classico Riserva, so I think we are being more than fair in trying to give Costco a shot here because technically, the Riserva should be of a higher quality. 

So, on that note, I think it’s time to get to drinking! We’ll take a quick break and be right back. And, if you have these wines or similar wines, drink along with us!


ARTICLES and LINKS

• https://costcowineblog.com/2020-kirkland-signature-chianti-classico-riserva/
• https://www.reversewinesnob.com/kirkland-signature-chianti-classico-riserva
• https://www.decanter.com/wine-reviews/italy/tuscany/costco-kirkland-signature-chianti-classico-riserva-2019-61999 
• https://liquorlaboratory.com/who-makes-kirkland-wine/ 
• https://www.binnys.com/wine/red-wines/sangiovese/castello-di-albola-chianti-classico-132330 
• https://www.winemadeeasy.com/wine/red-wine/sangiovese/castello-di-albola-chianti-classico-2020-750-ml-58331.html
• https://www.castellodiquerceto.it/wp-content/uploads/doc/schede/cc_cdq_en.pdf 
• https://www.prestigewineimports.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CdQ-Chianti-DOCG-Tech-Sheet.pdf 

Chianti Wine Pairing Tasting and Reviews 22:46

Wine: Kirkland Signature Chianti Classico Riserva
Region: Italy, Tuscany
Year: 2019
Price: $8.99
Retailer: Costco
Alcohol: 13.5%
Grapes: Sangiovese (could not find any other mentions of different grapes)
Professional Rating: JS92

What we tasted and smelled in this Chianti Classico Riserva:

• On the nose: Tart cherry, smoke, shoe leather, tar, earthy
• In the mouth: Astringent, tight, simple, smooth, good acidity, cherry, cedar

Food to pair with this Chianti Classico Riserva: Pizza, chicken parmigiana, lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, caprese, something with bread, red sauce, Italian foods, grilled sausage, grilled foods. Not really a steak wine. More of a party or picnic wine. 
 
As a reminder on our rating scale, we rate on a scale of 1-10, where 7 and above means that we would buy it, and 4 and below means that we are likely to pour it down the sink, and a 5 or 6 means we are likely to drink it and finish it, but we are probably not going to buy it. 

Rating: 

• Joe: 7/10
• Carmela: 7/10

Wine: Castello di Albola Chianti Classico (Click here to learn more about this wine on wine.com. Affiliate link)
Region:  Italy, Chianti Classico
Year: 2020
Price: $15.99
Retailer: wine.com
Alcohol: 13.5%
Grapes: Sangiovese (could not find any other mentions of different grapes)
Professional Rating: WS 90

What we tasted and smelled in this Chianti Classico:

• On the nose: Tart cherry, smells hot, wood, matchstick, leather, richer smelling. 
• In the mouth: Cherry licorice, sweet cherry,

Food to pair with this Chianti Classico: This wine is a little fancier dinner wine, pasta with red sauce ricotta and arugula, could handle a steak. For a red wine lover. 

Rating: 

• Joe: 8/10
• Carmela: 7/10

Wine: Castello di Querceto Chianti Classico (Click here to learn more about this wine on wine.com. Affiliate link)
Region:  Italy, Chianti Classico
Year: 2020
Price: $15.99
Retailer: wine.com (also at Costco)
Alcohol: 13%
Grapes: 92% Sangiovese and 8% Canaiolo, Colorino, Mammolo e Ciliegiolo
Professional Rating: JS 92, WS 91, R 88

What we tasted and smelled in this Chianti Classico:

• On the nose: Red licorice, rich, cherry, spice, clove, pepper, tar
• In the mouth: Rich, smooth, more tannin. 

Food to pair with this Chianti Classico:  Wild boar, good red meat wine, bolognese, duck, good at a dinner party


Rating: 

• Joe: 8/10
• Carmela: 8/10

Which one of these are you finishing tonight?

• Carmela: Castello di Querceto Chianti Classico
• Joe: Castello di Querceto Chianti Classico

Who won the Costco Kirkland Signature Chianti Challenge?
The other guys! Not a landslide. Costco is a great wine for the price.

Taste profiles expected from Chianti  40:50

• General 
  • Wine Folly: Cherry, Plum, tomato leaf, leather, clay pot
  • WF: Common tasting notes include red fruits, dried herbs, balsamic vinegar, smoke, and game. On the high end, wines offer notes of preserved sour cherries, dried oregano, balsamic reduction, dry salami, espresso, and sweet tobacco.
• Costco Kirkland Signature Chianti Classico Riserva
  • Reverse Wine Snob: The 2019 Kirkland Signature Chianti Classico Riserva begins with the classic Chianti aromas of sour black cherry, earth, a bit of spice, licorice and even a little mint.
  • Costco Wine Blog: red fruit and spice on the nose; in the mouth it is medium in body with more red fruit on the palate; flavors of cherry, anise with earthy undertones; in the finish the wine is dry and acidic.
• Castello di Albola
  • WS: Offers fine depth to the cherry, plum and woodsy aromas, with iron, tobacco and herb flavors. Shows solid structure and lingers nicely on the finish.
  • Binny’s: Ruby-red advancing to garnet. Bursting with strawberry, red berries, and notes of sage, spice cake, and subtle earth. Vibrant and medium bodied, revealing lively cherry and exotic spice and leading to polished tannins and a delicate finish.
• Castello di Querceto
  • Costco Wine Blog: medium ruby with a bit of garnet; it is medium in body, signature Chianti; Flavors of black cherry and  blackberry with leather and earth into the finish.

Outro and how to find The Wine Pair Podcast 43:01

Ok, so, Carmela, it is just about time for us to go, but before we do, we want to thank you very much for listening to us - AND if you haven’t done so yet, now would be the perfect time to subscribe to our podcast AND also a fantastic time to leave us a nice rating and review on our website or Apple podcasts or other podcast service - and it is an awesome and free way to support us and help us grow listeners.

We would also love to hear from you about a wine you would like us to taste and review. You can, leave a message for us on our website thewinepairpodcast.com, or you can just email us at joe@thewinepairpodcast.com and tell us about a wine you are curious about, or curious what we think of it. And, follow us on Instagram so you can see pictures of all of these wines we are tasting and reviewing. 

And, next time you listen to an episode, drink along with us and see if you are tasting and experiencing the same things we are - it’s like a date night! And if you do that, we’d love to hear what you think!

Alright, with that, we are going to sign off, so thanks again, and we will see you next time. And, as we say, life is short, so stop drinking shitty wine.