Bibi Graetz, Colore, 2024
Bibi Graetz, Colore, 2024
- 75cl
- 13%
- Red Still
- Sangiovese
- Organic
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Optimal drinking window: 2026 - 2042
Est. delivery in Spring, 2027
Bibi Graetz is one of Tuscany’s great mavericks, and for nearly two decades has been concentrating on making some of the most distinctive and exciting wines in the region. Everything about Colore is obsessive. The grapes are hand-sorted not once but three times - in the vineyard, at the winery door, and again before fermentation, to ensure only the purest berries make the cut.
After the initial Supertuscan revolution in the 60s and 70s with Sassicaia and Tignanello, Bibi leads another wave of pioneers. Specialising in old vine Sangiovese, his vineyards, dotted about Chianti Classico, are populated by gnarled fifty-eighty year old vines, which provide great intensity to his wines. The diverse blend of terroirs and soil types further add to the kaleidoscope of complex characters his wines exude.
What the critics say:
"Amazing quality for the wet 2024 vintage with super aromas of cherry, vanilla spice, sandalwood, rosewood, lilac and nectarine follow through to a medium-bodied wine with very fine tannins and a crunchy finish. It goes on for a minute or two and it's so refined and sophisticated. Drink or hold."
"2024 Bibi Graetz ‘Colore’ Red Wine-Sourced from handpicked fruit from the Lamole and Olmo vineyards, picked sub-plot by sub plot. Some of the vines are now over 100 years of age. This is fabulous. Very similar in the glass – in terms of extraction, colour density and hue – to Testamatta, but very different in personality. This is bloodier, richer, deeper and darker in its fruit profile, more peppery in its spiciness and with the floral aromatics ratcheted up a notch or too – with more lavender, lilac and rosemary. This is a little less ample in form in the mouth, with much greater mid-palate density in part as a consequence. Long and gently tapering on the finish, but ethereal and aerial too and very much in the new stylistic register forged by Bibi Graetz in recent vintages."
The vineyards around Fiesole sit at altitudes between 250 and 400 metres on the slopes above Florence, on soils that are predominantly galestro — the friable, schist-like stone that drains freely and stresses the vine just enough to concentrate flavour without losing freshness. Alberese clay also features, adding structure and mineral depth. The elevation brings cooler nights that preserve acidity in the grapes, essential for the long-term ageing potential that defines Colore.
Colore is classified as a Toscana IGT, which in this context is not a sign of compromise but of freedom. The IGT designation allows Bibi to blend varieties and work with vineyards across the broader Tuscan landscape without being constrained by the rules of Chianti Classico or other DOC and DOCG frameworks. It is the category that gave us the original Super Tuscans, and Colore sits comfortably in that tradition — wines defined by their maker's ambition rather than by a committee's rules.
The 2024 growing season in Tuscany was defined by a cool, wet spring followed by a summer that never quite committed to the heat Sangiovese craves — periodic rain events through the summer kept growers watchful and selective work in the vineyard essential. Those who managed canopies well and harvested at the right moment came out ahead; those who hesitated paid for it. It was a vintage that rewarded attentiveness rather than simply good fortune, and the best producers — particularly in Chianti Classico and Montalcino — rose to that challenge.
What landed in the cellar was fresher and more lifted than the riper, more muscular style that warmer years like 2022 tend to produce. Sangiovese shows bright acidity and firm structure with real energy behind it — less about sheer density, more about definition and length. It is too early to draw firm conclusions on the very best Brunello and Riserva releases, which will need time to resolve, but the Rosso and Chianti-level wines are already drinking well and offering genuine pleasure without demanding patience.
OUR GROWERS
Bibi Graetz
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