Casa Chianti Classico, Radda in Chianti site features

You arrive at a convent, not a visitor centre. The building is the eighteenth-century convento di Santa Maria al Prato, and the parts that make the atmosphere are the parts the friars built: a cloister, the old refectory, and a portico in front of the church, put up when the religious community restructured the Romanesque oratory it found here.

The terrace is the other half of the setting, looking out over the hills of the Chianti.

The sensory route is the main exhibit and it is unusual. Tourists, wine lovers and professionals walk interactive rooms holding a glass of wine tasted blind, working to recognise its principal characteristics and above all to appreciate the colours, scents and taste of Chianti Classico — and to associate an important wine with an equally characterising territory.

Since 2022 the oil has its own room. The route includes a sensory room dedicated to Chianti Classico DOP extra virgin olive oil, with the chance to learn to recognise the characteristics of a quality oil.

The permanent exhibition is the historical spine. It represents three hundred years of the history of the delimitation of the Chianti wine-growing zone, from Cosimo de' Medici's edict of 1716 to the present day. A video room with views of the territory completes the route.

The church keeps a painting worth the detour on its own. Inside is a work by Neri di Bicci, dated 1474, representing the Madonna and Child between Saints Nicholas, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and Anthony Abbot.

Three hundred years of a boundary

The permanent exhibition runs from Cosimo de' Medici's edict of 1716, which first drew the limits of the Chianti wine zone, to the present day — which makes this one of the oldest delimited wine territories anywhere, and this room the place to understand why the Chianti Classico mark means a geography rather than a style.

Tasting blind, in rooms built for it

The sensory route puts visitors through interactive rooms with a glass of wine bendato — blind — intent on recognising its main characteristics and on appreciating the colours, scents and taste of Chianti Classico.

An olive-oil room, since 2022

Added to the route in that year: a sensory room for Chianti Classico DOP extra virgin olive oil, teaching the characteristics of a quality oil. Oil is the Chianti's less remunerative crop and rarely gets this treatment.

A Neri di Bicci of 1474

In the church: the Madonna and Child between Saints Nicholas, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene and Anthony Abbot. Saint Nicholas is there because this oratory depended on San Niccolò up in the town.

The convent itself

A cloister, the friars' old refectory, a portico in front of the church and a terrace over the Chianti hills. The convent is Settecento; the sacred building it grew around is remembered from the beginning of the 9th century as a pilgrimage destination.

And it is also a bistrot and an enoteca

Al Convento, plus the Gallo Nero wine shop, exhibition spaces, wine courses and cookery courses on booking. The kitchen runs 12:30–15:00 and there is a happy hour Friday and Saturday 18:00–20:00.