Italian wines Toscana

In the Tuscany region we find immortal expressions of local grape varieties, from Montalcino with its Brunello, to Prugnolo Gentile of the Nobile di Montepulciano wine, up to the most famous Italian wine: Chianti. All these different varieties justify the variability of a not replicable territory, here on a regional scale, but that applies throughout the country. From the lightest and most salty shades of the Massa Carrara coast, to the strictness of the most historical DOCG, to the roundness of Southern Maremma.

This is how the versatility of a single grape variety can guarantee a complexity of expressions. Absent are the youngest and most considered area today, the district of Bolgheri and Castagneto Carducci, places of breathtaking beauty that combine it to the production of wines of character and longevity unthinkable only up to half a century ago. This area, along with Val di Cornia, became well-known thanks to the most famous Italian Bordeaux.



A white wine to remember is Vernaccia di San Gimignano, from the non-aromatic vine of the same name, but of fine personality. Carmignano with Sangiovese and Cabernet, and Cortona with Syrah, make their way into the already rich Tuscan representation.


The history of Tuscan winemaking begins even before the Etruscan period, around the seventh century BC. Already in the sixth century BC the region becomes an exporter of wine in the Mediterranean Sea.


With the fall of the Roman Empire, we have to wait until the High Middle Ages to find documents about the important role of viticulture in the area, such as those found in Badia a Coltibuono, in the Chianti Classico of Siena, demonstrating the crucial role of the monastic orders for the development of agriculture. From 1100 onwards, the vine cultivation is widespread, even within the town centers, as evidenced by the ancient name of the church of Santa Maria Novella, or Santa Maria delle Vigne. Fundamental, then, is the role played, since 1300, by the families of Tuscan wine, who begin their activities to wine producers (Ricasoli , Antinori and Frescobaldi over all) .




Among the first wines quoted in the literature we can report Vernaccia di San Gimignano (1276) and Chianti (1404), to get to the great splendor of the 1500s with wines and vines such as Greco, Moscatelli and Montepulciano, set out in the famous “Bacco in Toscana” by Francesco Redi (1685), a dithyramb which tells of the journey of Bacchus in a region where wine is produced everywhere. So much that in a pioneering manner in 1738 Cosimo Trinci, and in 1773 Giovanni Carlo Villifranchi, first described the regional ampelography, substantially not different from the present, as already punctuated by the presence of vines from other countries.