It’s always fun visiting the cultivated crew at Corzano e Paterno. After working and studying abroad with David Croix in Burgundy and Mac Forbes in the Yarra, Aljoschia Goldschmidt’s son William has joined the estate. The younger, curly-locked Goldschmidt is well-travelled and, like his father, he is sharp as a tack. Along with his day job at Corzano, William has established an exciting label called Clivo Altura, exploring the Classico high-country around Vagliagli at 550 metres. Like many of his generation, he is consumed with perfume and elegance and has strong convictions on achieving it in the winery—using more whole bunches and lighter extractions—and, of course, through the kind of haute-couture viticulture emanating from France. Not that William will have it all his way. Alijosha’s artistic cousin, Arianna Gelpke, has been Corzano’s winemaker since 2018 and has strong beliefs of her own. Arianna has only enhanced the purity and unadorned earth-to-glass character of the estate’s Chianti through her classically minded and graceful large-cask winemaking. Tasting with Ariana and William in Tuscany last month, you could sense the friendly competition in ideas and philosophies that will serve Corzano well in the future, even if the place will always be much stronger than the winemaker. As we tasted the 2022 wines from bottle, Aljoschia had a few choice words for a vintage that was as warm and dry as any he can remember. Not that Corzano’s delightful wines from this vintage bear any of the vigneron’s psychological battle scars—they are further proof that beautiful, balanced wine can still be produced despite the speed of climate change. “Some nice rains at the end of August really revived the vineyards,” says the agronomist, whose 2022 wines surprisingly carry higher acidity and lower pHs than either 2020 or 2021; a freshness that dovetails wonderfully with the year’s juicy fruit and supple tannins.“Our vines are strong, and they continue to surprise us,” says Arianna, whose hand-tended organic vineyards are populated by a judicious selection of mass-selection cuttings and high-quality clonal material. “Respectful farming has never been more critical than it is today.” To round out the anecdote at the start of the offer, there is no difference between the terroirs of the hills on either side of the Pesa Valley. You’ve got precisely the same altitude and the same rocky, pebble-rich alberese soils. That one side of the river can label its wines with a premium DOCG is simply a quirk of bureaucracy: the boundary had to end somewhere. As the Italians like to say, tutto è bene quel che finisce bene. All’s well that ends well.