On 3 Feb 2004 10:27:54 GMT, Michael Pronay > wrote:

>"t.schnack" > wrote:
>
>> This is the listing of the best Chianti wines according to
>> Gambero Rosso 2004 guide.
>>
>> [...]
>
>I wouldn't take any list of top Chianti for serious that doesn't
>list La Massa's "Giorgio Primo". Does anyone - Mike T.? - know why
>it's not included here?

True, it had been on the list 8 years in a row, why the disappearance
in 2004?

I can ask Gigi Piumatti when I see him next, but two things come to
mind.

One, the guide is a collaboration between two very different entities,
Gambero Rosso AND Slow Food. The way they split the tastings
nationwide changes each year, and who knows who got to judge the
Chianti Classico.

Two, in 2004 the guide responded to some of the protests of many of us
Slow Food types, and recognizing that the guide had become,
paradoxically, an accomplice of the overwhelming Italian tendency
towards overoaked high-tech international wines, it finally decided to
make the swing and penalize wineries that used oak to flavour wine (as
opposed to maturing it), that used concentrators, or that used
excessively heavy oenological tricks.

How Giorgio Primo is affected by the above considerations, I don't
know.

Mike