Hannibal Lecter’s Beloved Chianti Gets More Sophisticated

Chianti used to be so simple. It was the pizza wine you bought in a green bottle in a straw (later plastic) basket amusingly called a fiasco. Even if the wine wasn’t all that good, you could always use the bottle afterwards as a candleholder.

It was the drink on the table of every movie scene set in an Italian restaurant, even the romantic dogs’ dinner in “Lady and the Tramp.” A “nice Kee-ann-tee” was the preferred tipple for Hannibal the Cannibal with his dinner of liver and fava beans in “The Silence of the Lambs.”