Aldo Sohm doesn’t usually get the chance to recommend affordable Chianti Classico wines to his clientele. As wine director at the three-star Michelin Le Bernardin in Manhattan, he’s most often asked to pair chef Eric Ripert’s exquisite seafood dishes with French wine. But Sohm, an Austrian who lives in Brooklyn, maintains an inventive wine list, and he keeps a few inexpensive hidden gems on the list for those who want to splurge on a meal without adding a $500 wine tab.
One of these bottles is Monte Bernardi’s Retromarcia Chianti Classico, which retails for just over $20 and is something of a darling in New York wine circles. The winemaker is Michael Schmelzer, an Italy-born, U.S.-raised, globe-hopping oenophile philosopher who also creates more expensive Riservas, a Rosato, and even a Super Tuscan. Retromarcia, which means “reverse gears” in Italian, represents his approach in making this 100% Sangiovese, in other words going back to an earlier winemaking style of low intervention and letting the grape speak for itself (so to speak).
“He goes back to the roots again of how wine was made in the 1950s,” Sohm says. “He questions everything. If you have pasta at home or bistecca, it totally works. It’s such a pleasing, all-around good wine for little money. Of course, you can taste his Riservas; they’re different. But this is such a great type of wine, honest and straightforward.”
At Le Bernardin, which reopens on March 17 (and begins taking reservations March 1), Sohm says he’d pair it with lamb. At his own Aldo Sohn Wine Bar, which he hopes to reopen soon, the Retromarcia would complement the truffle pasta.
Truffle pasta. Credit: Shimon & Tammar
Sohm’s interest in the Chianti region goes back to a summer he spent living in Florence in the 1990s, when he says he had a chance to “taste all the villages.” He details this and discusses his appreciation for Italian wines in his best-selling 2019 book Wine Simple: A Totally Approachable Guide From a World-Class Sommelier.
Asked to describe the Retromarcia even further, Sohm says, “To me, there’s a heartiness in the fruit. There’s a complexity in the fruit. Like Sangiovese, the tannins are a little more pronounced, the acidity can be a bit more forward and have this freshness, but to me, this is an all-around great food wine."
Aldo Sohm portrait by Francesco Tonelli