Chianti Classico is in a worse position than Rodney Dangerfield  – at least Dangerfield got laughs to compensate for the lack of respect.

A couple of years ago I was talking to the wine director of one on New York’s best-known Italian restaurants, and he complained that Chianti Classico was the hardest sell  on his list. It was almost as if people don’t order it because it’s so reasonably priced. Unfortunately, this perverse process that passes for thought is all too common among many of the wine aficionados who peruse the world’s mega wine lists on a regular basis.

Fortunately, though, it is not a condition that afflicts the enlightened readers of this column. Here I seek out wines with personality, wines that taste of the soil from which they come – and herein lies the Chianti Classico problem. If someone has graduated from Coca-Cola to California cola wines, and then scaled the heights of wine elitism (at least as it is sometimes perceived) by developing a taste for Super Tuscans, of course they are not going to be impressed by a mere Chianti Classico like the latest Five Star Nick’s Wine of the Week, the Canonica a Cerreto Chianti Classico 2007, ($27).

Canonica A Cerreto

Now please, don’t get me wrong, there are some super Super Tuscans, but we can’t all spend $100 a bottle every night. And that’s where this simple, fresh and vibrant Chianti Classico comes in. It’s unpretentious, vivacious and endlessly versatile, a wine to drink with friends over plates of pasta and large pizzas at a trattoria in Tuscany – or at least to imagine that’s where you are drinking it.

It will stand up to a beefy Tuscan steak, and not embarrass itself when confronted with a Vitello al Tonno – hardly a Tuscan dish, but that is the point here. Easy-drinking versatility is what this wine is the master of.

+++++

To find this wine near you try www.wine-searcher.com

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