Way back in the day, when I was a well-known Casanova, my date du jour and I would often flee our lives in Westchester County, N.Y., for the spicy meatballs of New York’s Little Italy.

You can’t beat Little Italy for a fun, group-singing kind of time. To lubricate our vocal cords, we’d drink wine that was great in an it-doesn’t-really-matter-what-the-wine-tastes-like kind of way.

Enlarge this image

2007 Bell’Agio Chianti, Italy
$13
Two thumbs up
Buy it because it makes a great candle-holder, enjoy it because of its simple, quaffable red cherry flavors with touches of smoke and cinnamon.

Enlarge this image

2001 Castello di Brolio Chianti Classico, Italy
$54
Two thumbs way up
The most expensive wine of the tasting, it was rich and full-bodied, with aromas of coffee, cola, nutmeg, allspice and plum. It had tart fruit flavors and subtle mineral qualities, with a hint of mint.

Enlarge this image

2004 Tenimenti Angelini Sanleonino, Chianti Classico, Italy
$18
Two thumbs way up
Quite drinkable but at the same time interesting with its array of bright berry aromas and flavors, such as cherry, cranberry, strawberry and dried cherry, with earthy cinnamon notes.

These wines came with straw baskets attached to the bottom of the bottle and the word “chianti” written on the label. Little did I know back then that Chianti and the surrounding region of Tuscany were undergoing a great transformation. The beginning of the end of the fiasco (straw-bottomed) bottle was upon us.

“I’d say the turning point for these wines came in 1990,” said Guido Piccinni, a native Italian and director of restaurants for the Mansion on Peachtree. “We really started to see some better wines around that time and 1990 was a great year in Tuscany. People started to take these wines much more seriously.”

I, too, have witnessed an escalating seriousness in chiantis. My first chianti tasting in 2003 saw nearly 10 fiasco bottles; the remaining 20 or so wines came in square-shouldered, Bordeaux-style bottles. These sangiovese-based wines were enjoyable, with several standouts, but the quality of the straw-bottomed bottles sent me back to Mulberry Street in Manhattan.

I’ve done a large-scale review of chianti wines about every 18 months since then. Slowly but surely, the number of fiasco bottles dwindled. Meanwhile, the quality and complexity of these wines increased.

“[Customers] expect value, but they also expect quality — and that is at any price level,” said Cristina Mariani-May, co-CEO of Banfi Vintners, which produces several chiantis and imports a number of others. Mariani-May was in Atlanta in February to promote her new wine, BelnerO, a sangiovese-based wine made south of Chianti in Montalcino.

“Over the past 30 years, there has been a dedication not only to quality, but to cleanliness,” Mariani-May said. “Back then, there was a lot more sulfur added to the wine and [fewer] stainless-steel fermenting tanks. Today, the wines just taste cleaner. … And, of course, we are working on sangiovese to make the grape itself better.”

Mariani-May, too, remembers when chianti suggested something else.

“Chianti used to mean wines served in restaurants with checkered tablecloths. Today, chiantis are more synonymous with Super Tuscans. … The great chiantis being made now are some of the greatest sangioveses of the world.”

I couldn’t agree with her more. You still can get a decent bottle of chianti for eight bucks, but you can also get an amazing wine starting at around $20.

For all you sentimentalists, there is a downside to this improved quality. I received merely one chianti in the iconic fiasco bottle (2007 Bell’Agio, $13) for this tasting. And it was far better than the chiantis of old. And while I should celebrate the elevation of these once-scorned wines, part of me misses those sufficiently adequate wines of the past.

Note: Wines are rated on a scale ranging from thumbs down, one thumb mostly up, one thumb up, two thumbs up, two thumbs way up and golden thumb award. These are suggested retail prices as provided by the winery, one of its agents or a local distributor.

— Gil Kulers is a certified wine educator with the Society of Wine Educators and teaches in-home wine classes.