The Wine Insider: Tuscany

Each month in The Wine Insider we will highlight one of our destination wine regions and share some interesting tidbits of information about it's wines. Make sure to check out our Tips, Parings and Facts on the right hand side of the page.

Toscana (or Tuscany as we know it in America)

Generally best known (and perhaps least respected) for the black rooster trademark of Chianti, Tuscany or "Toscana" in Italian actually comprises several different regions and wines.

Between the historic and beautiful cities of Florence and Siena lies the heart of Tuscany, the gorgeous Chianti Classico, dotted with hilltop mediaeval villages that overlook alternating rolling vineyards and forests in what has to be one of the most scenic wine regions of the world. Far from the sometimes dubious wines of yesteryear (that were made under government rules that forced winemakers to add mediocre varietals to the blend) Chianti these days is of very consistent quality, with wines that range from easy-going pizza friends to reservas that stand up to worldwide scrutiny as serious and age-worthy wines.

Whilst in this region it's tough to decide how to divide your time between the myriad wineries, castles, village streets and artisans from potters to sausage makers to confectioners to crystal workers... just to name a few! Many wineries are small family-owned with typical Italian hospitality that's impossible to resist, and you'll undoubtedly wish you had longer to enjoy all that Chianti has to offer.

To make your life more complicated, add to Chianti the other parts of Toscana. South of Siena are the villages of Montepulciano and Montalcino - where the stellar Brunello di Montalcino comes from. To the north-east of Florence is the Ruffino region where olives abound as well as vines. Go west to the Mediterranean coast and you'll find Maremma, one of Europe's most dynamic wine regions, now being re-discovered by top winemakers (although such names as Sassicaia and Ornellaio have been producing their famous Super-Tuscan blends here for decades).

Italians are some of the warmest, most welcoming people you're likely to meet, and they believe in having fun! Distractions on your stay in Toscana will include events such as the famous Palio horse races in the town square of Siena, maybe an opera or concert in Florence - to say nothing of the museums and churches with their magnificent Duomos in either city. If you're into art you could easily let it consume your whole vacation and miss the wine altogether if you're not careful! I recall walking down the riverside in Florence one time and stopping to browse in a small sculptor's showroom. Impressed by the wonderful statues I started chatting to the owner, and discovered that this tiny shop supplied most of the magnificent pieces that adorn the Bellagio in Las Vegas!

Food is almost as important to Italians as wine, and the key to Italian cuisine is the raw ingredients. Whether it's walking through a village market and tasting the best tomatoes or radishes of your life, or participating in a cooking class for a morning, you'll have the opportunity to learn the secrets of how Italian food tastes sooo good! Cooking classes come in all forms, from high-end classes with famous chefs to relaxed sessions in a local farmhouse where some of the family may not even speak English, there's a chance for everyone to learn in their own style.

Your only constraint in Toscana is how much time the boss will let you spend here - and if that's not enough you could always think about absconding to live under the "Tuscan Sun"; you wouldn't be the first!

Tuscany Wine & Culinary Adventure...you can savor it!

Whatever your interest - art, culture, political and religious history, photography, food and wine there's no place like Tuscany. For wine lovers, the region has played a major role in wine making and trade since the Etruscan era 1000+ BC. Time leap forward into the present and the winemakers still respect the traditional ways (most Italians do!) but have become more creative and innovative and thus have begun a new era- these past 20 years - where the wines have improved remarkably, placing them in the highest echelons of world class wines. Visit Our Tour Page by clicking the link below.

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Toscana Serving Tips

Tuscany has a wide range of wines, which produces a rich choice of what to do with it. Most Tuscan whites are meant to be drunk young, but reds run the full gamut. A simple Chianti Classico, or a Rosso de Montepulciano, would not be a wine to lock away in your cellar for more than a year or so, but Brunellos, Supertuscans or Chianti Riservas can - and should be - aged.

Some top-notch Brunellos really need to be treated like Barolos - put away and forgotten for a decade at least - before they really start to show their true potential. Happily (and in contrast to the futures selling of Bordeaux's top wines) the Italians put restrictions on most of their wines to force producers to age the wine after bottling in their own cellars for a period; generally the later it's released into the world the longer living it should be, though of course there's always variance between individual wines.

The bright, fresh fruit coming from the Sangiovese grape in Chianti or Ruffina wines meant for young drinking takes on a very different aspect when the more complex wines - with the same varietals but from different parcels, with different vinification and aging techniques - have a chance to mature. Now the wine starts to take on orange and chestnut hues, and the flavors turn from red fruits to underwood, wet leaves, mushrooms and the like. At the same time, tannins, which in these wines are often quite overbearing in their youth, have had a chance to polymerize and soften, keeping the wine's structure but no longer dominating the palate.

It's not always easy to know just how long to keep a wine of course. Ideally, you'll have room to store a case of each of your favorites so you can sample them at regular intervals and experience them at all stages of their life. For the majority of us however, we have to rely on tasting notes from experts or consumers, which can be found on the web quite easily. This will tell you how a particular wine is likely to be drinking, then you can decide when to open that lone bottle tucked in the cooler, or be inspired to search for an aged wine you don't yet own.

Often we'll find that a wine is still "closed" when we open it (there's a conundrum for you!) - the tannins are still hanging on to the aroma and taste molecules so you can't get at them. Oxygen is your friend here; decanting the bottle for anything up to 24 hours can dramatically help bring out those aromatics and soften hard-edged tannins. If you don't have a decanter a pitcher can work - pour it back into the bottle when you're ready to serve so it doesn't look like "jug" wine! Just opening the bottle early has limited effect, as it's the relation between surface area and volume that makes the difference, and the neck of a bottle is pretty small.

We can't forget the dessert wines of this region of course. The venerable Vin Santo, with its roots in the religious ceremonies of centuries past, which is aged for years in small barrels in hot attics, is both delicious and practically indestructible. The wine gets so much oxygen during its upbringing that once open it's incredibly stable, and a well-structured Vin Santo can stay open for days or weeks without really deteriorating. Every serious cellar should have a few of these for those cold, rainy or snowy winter evenings in front of a roaring fire!

Toscana Food Pairing

Tuscans love food almost as much as they love wine. Though known by other Italians rather rudely as "bean eaters" and stereotyped by the heavy Riboletta bread-based soup, Tuscan cuisine is actually very diverse and healthy. Fresh produce, incredible Chianini beef (think Florentine Steak!), never-ending varieties of sausage, smoked and dried meats from both raised herds and hunted game, and of course the wonderful range of pasta dishes that makes Italy so special... especially during truffle season!

Chianti's a perfect match for the simple, rustic foods like Riboletta or pasta with meat sauces - light enough to go down easily, but with enough body, acid, light tannins and fruit to enhance these foods and keep them fresh on the palate. As a general rule of thumb, as with most wines, younger-drinking wines go better with these foods, as well as grills.

As autumn draws in and the hunting season starts, it's time for Tuscans to reach deeper into their caves for something more complex - and older of course - to pair with their wild boar stew, venison and the like. These dishes need the body, tannic structure and "degraded" fruit of Brunellos or Riservas to stand up to the richness of the dish. Not to say that a younger wine can't often go well also, but if those old bottles are winking at you enticingly through the dust, this would be the food to marry them with. Old reds also go with cheese of course, and... truffles - we're talking Italian white truffles here, not the black ones that all too often taste more of earth than anything else. White Italian truffles are in a world of their own. Rich and pungent - sometimes almost to the point of being overbearing when every restaurant has them at the doorway in high season - there's nothing like them! Some whites will go well with truffles also, as long as they have sufficient body, complexity and maturity to stand their ground. Particularly on the coast by Maremma and Bolgheri, you'll find excellent seafood. Here of course Tuscan whites find their most popular home. Vermentino, Sauvignon Blanc, Traminer and other white varietals (including a fair bit of the ubiquitous Chardonnay these days) come in a range of styles from light and fruity to crisp and dry. These days mostly un-oaked, they match nicely to the fresh fish and shellfish from the Mediterranean coast.

Vin Santo is lovely with a good chunk of Parmesan, but the tradition of course is to dip in it the delicious almond-studded biscotti at the end of the meal as you toast your toes in front of a few blazing logs, in your favorite armchair...

Toscana Wine Facts

The story of Chianti so charmingly illustrates the Italian nature - of both its people and government - that it has to be told. In the old days, Chianti, like most wines made for local consumption, was rather rough. Vineyards were not especially carefully farmed, yields were high and juice was correspondingly diluted, so the "press" part of the winemaking process was an important procedure, carried out to the maximum to squeeze every last drop of color and flavor from the wine. Consequently, regulations stated that the Sangiovese juice be cut with white Malvasia or Trebbiano to ease the palate before it was put into the straw-basket covered fiasco bottles that ended up making so many lamps and candlesticks. By the 1970s Tuscan winemakers had higher aspirations for their wines than their government, and conscientious winemakers who were now producing low-yield, high-quality Sangiovese didn't want to pollute or dilute it with white wine. With typical independent Italian nature, many of these either labeled their wines "Vino di Tavola" - which became "Supertuscan" or simply kept calling it Chianti although they were breaking the rules. Finally, in 1996 the government caught up, and allowed winemakers to leave out the white grapes - and since 2006 white grapes have actually been prohibited in Chianti.

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