The Chianti Riserva Ducale 1959, Ruffino has been properly stored by me since the early 1960s. I still have a few bottles. The fill was just slightly below the neck. The cork was sound, but very difficult to extract cleanly. I, at least, do not expect any Chianti to be very good at 47 years old. I have tasted other older examples that were not oxidized, but they usually had lost most fruit and were very asture and tannic. This wine is the rare exception. The year 1959 was very warm and produced very ripe and concentrated wines throughout most of Europe. In the case of white Burgundy, some wines were extremely concentrated, but lacked acid and balance, so they oxidized too early.
The color was still a fairly deep scarlet with only moderate age showing around the rim. The bouquet was intense with plenty of dark fruit and hints of straw that sometimes appear in older Chianti. I could detect no oxidation. The wine held up well after opening and did not rapidly fall apart. It was smooth, tannins were resolved, and the acid balance was right. I was not surprised because I have had this wine before. It was better younger, but not much.
This wine comes from an era when most Italian wine in the US was of a very cheap sort. A few of the larger Italian wine companies did distribute a few of their better wines across the country. Then there was California "Chianti" which was even cheaper. One could find a few top Italian wines in large cities that had a large Italian population. An Italian-American student from New York that I knew in college mentioned old Brunello as being availabe in a few top Italian restaurants there, and he called Brunello "godfather wine" because only godfathers could afford it at restaurant prices!.