Tuscany Wine & Food

WINE

Chianti Classico: This is Italy's most famous product of Bacchus. Chianti is as variable as it is versatile, and while there's plenty of mass-produced cheap wine out there, the vintners of the Chianti Classico zone in the hills between Florence and Siena craft excellent wines of the highest quality.

Chianti is without a doubt the most well known of all Italian wines. There may be only one denomination - Chianti D.O.C.G - but there are many different styles, ranging from light Beaujolais-style quaffing wines to structured, complex wines with enough backbone to reward aging and maturing.

The predominant grape variety is Sangiovese, but the laws allow for the addition of between 10 and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. A Riserva wine is one that has been aged longer before being released; it should come from a good year and benefit from further aging, although it is not always the guarantee of quality that might reasonably be expected.

The vineyards of Chianti are scattered over much of central Tuscany; the Classico zone begins north of Siena and reaches most of the way to Florence. This zone generally produces the best wine. The other six zones are:

• Colli Aretini The hills around Arezzo produce a medium-bodied Chianti, soft and best drunk young. 
• Colli Senesi From the hills to the south and west of Siena, this is the largest Chianti sub-zone. Here Chianti plays second fiddle to Brunello and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.
• Colli Fiorentini All styles of Chianti, from light everyday stuff to some excellent Riservas.
• Montalbano From the hills west of Florence. The better grapes tend to go to make Carmignano.
• Rufina The smallest of the seven, this zone to the northeast of Florence, produces some of the most complex and long-lived wines in Chianti.
• Colline Pisane Pleasant, light wines from the hills around Pisa.

Brunello di Montalcino: Brunello is the smell of mossy, damp earth and musky berries. It tastes of dark, jam-like fruits and dry vanilla. This is Tuscany's most powerful red and perhaps the top wine in all of Italy. Break out this complex elixir to accompany the mighty bistecca alla Fiorentina (Florentine-style steak).

It is quite common to find grape varieties whose names change from one area to the next. In this case, Brunello is the name of the grape as well as the wine, but we are still dealing with a variety of Sangiovese, the predominant red grape of Tuscany.

Brunello is an expensive wine. This tends to be the first thing people talk about when discussing it - is it worthy of the price tag? This is somewhat of a moot point as the producers seem to have no trouble whatsoever in selling their wines, whatever the price. The ‘second' wine, Rosso di Montalcino, is available as a far less expensive alternative, but even this wine has spiraled in price in recent years.

As with Barolo, Brunello was often cited as a wine that spent far too long being wood-aged; when it finally emerged it was as a dry wine, packed with tannin and with little remaining fruit. Times have changed, and many wines are now far more approachable. When it is good, it is very, very good, with great depth and structure that benefits from prolonged bottle-aging.

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano: This purple-garnet wine smells of violets and tastes of juicy red berries, dark fruits, and a hint of musty, mossy earth. Of the traditional wines (no French grape intrusions), it plays second banana to Brunello, but many people find this Noble Wine a far more forgiving vino, and much more versatile. Although it's powerful and complex, you can drink it with just about anything but fish.

In this area we find another name for the Sangiovese grape, Prugnolo Gentile. While enologists differ as to whether this variety is truly Sangiovese or something else entirely, whatever it is, when blended with small amounts of Canaiolo and/or Mammolo Vino Nobiles can combine the depth and backbone of a Brunello di Montalcino with the finesse of a fine Chianti.

Rosso di Montepulciano: The ‘second' wine to Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, in much the same way as Rosso di Montalcino is the second wine to Brunello di Montalcino. Here too, a lighter juicy wine may be bottled and sold young, as opposed to being aged in wood and left to brood for a while. The DOC was only created in 1989 and a ‘style' has yet to emerge.

Vin Santo: Grapes that have begun to turn to raisins on the vine and then been sun-dried are fermented in oak barriques to produce Tuscany's powerful sweet dessert "holy wine." The amber drink is fine on its own, but the real way to enjoy it is to use cantucci (twice-baked hard almond cookies) as sponges. Every winemaker sets aside a few barrels of vin santo, but some of the best is made by Vittorio Innocenti who we will visit at his cantina in Montefollonico.

Food

Tuscan cuisine draws heavily from the region's peasant tradition when resourceful Tuscan women created miracles from "poor" ingredients like beans, wheat, vegetables and olive oil.  Nowadays, with the standard of living significantly higher, meat (formerly only available to Tuscan elites) has made its way onto nearly every table, giving visitors a great array of dishes to choose from.

Pastas-  Any restaurant, or cook worth his/her salt will hand roll their pasta.  In Tuscany, local specialities include thick spaghetti-like pici (made with only water and flour), ravioli, and tagliatelle.  You can taste the sturdy texture of the dough, served all'aglione (with a spicy red garlic sauce), with ragu (a meat sauce), or (in season) with porcini mushrooms.

Vegetables-  Soups are standard fare in Tuscany and ribollita, a soup combining old bread, beans and vegetables (literally meaning "reboiled"), is a testament to the famous Tuscan resourcefulness.  In the summer, Tuscans move away from these heavier bean soups to lighter fare, such as bruschetta and panzanella, a regional comfort food made by soaking stale bread in olive oil and vinegar and mixing it into a tomato paste.

Meats- Pork is the traditional peasant staple, as each family would slaughter one pig each winter and cure it for consumption throughout the year.  Nowadays, visitors can still expect to taste a marvelous array of prosciuttos, but Tuscans are not limited to cured meats.  Traditional dishes like wild boar, generally stewed for hours until it reaches a point of soft delisciousness, still abound.  Many restaurants serve beef from the local chianina cow, the premium cut being the generously-proportioned bistecca alla fiorentina, the region's signature .

Desserts- The Tuscans are not renowned for their sweet tooths and many meals end with a selection of locally grown fruit including cherries, strawberries, peaches, plums, figs and grapes.  On special occasions and in restaurants you can find panna cotta (a pudding-like dish), tiramisu and fruit tarts.  Of course, gelato, in a dizzying array of flavors, is available in gelaterias in every small town.  The annual international gelato champion has his shop in San Gimignano.