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Central and Southern Italy

Table of Contents
  1. Tuscany (Toscana)
  2. Umbria
  3. Marches (Marche)
  4. Abruzzo
  5. Latium (Lazio)
  6. Molise
  7. Campania
  8. Apulia (Puglia)
  9. Basilicata
  10. Calabria
  11. Siciliy (Sicilia)
  12. Sardinia (Sardegna)

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Tuscany (Toscana)

On the Tyrrhenian Coast of Italy, the region of Tuscany has become a byword for Italian culture. A famous artistic legacy and rich history match the natural beauty of the Tuscan countryside, unfolding in waves of golden and green hills that ebb and flow between the Apennine Mountains and the sea.



Wine is deeply embedded in Tuscany’s cultural heritage—the famous medieval Florentine poet Dante Alighieri praised the Vernaccia of San Gimignano, and legislation delimiting the Chianti zone dates to 1716. The first DOC and DOCG zones to be authorized in Italy were Tuscan. Wine and commercial agriculture are big business in Tuscany, and the hills are a patchwork of olive tree groves, vineyards, and wheat fields—a natural evolution of the “promiscuous” agriculture that ancient Romans practiced, wherein these three staple crops of Tuscany were planted side by side in the same fields. In the past, Chianti was synonymous with Italian wine—and a reminder, not unfairly, of its troubled quality. Historically bottled in a fiasco due to the inferior quality of Italian glass, the squat, straw-covered Chianti bottles came to epitomize the rustic, cheap nature of Italian wine in the late 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Tuscany’s winemakers have responded with a surge in quality over the last quarter century, slashing vineyard yields and building on the successes of the “Super-Tuscan” trailblazers Marquis Mario Rocchetta, who released the first commercial vintage of Sassicaia in 1968, and his nephew Piero Antinori, whose Tignanello bottling soon followed. While the benchmark for quality has been raised significantly, it may be at the expense of typicity—the Bordeaux grapes and model of winemaking extend great influence over the modern Tuscan estate. Nonetheless
Comments

  • Whoops. Previously submitted-then-deleted this comment by mistake. The section on Campania includes the following text: 'On the volcanic tufa soils of the lower mountain slopes, red wines are produced from Aglianico and Primitivo, and white varietal wines are produced from the fragrant Falanghina grape.' The phrase 'volcanic tufa' should read 'volcanic tuff' - see this superb article by Alex Maltman on this very subject in the World of Fine Wine. 
     

  • The section on Sicilia includes the following text: 'in a era when taxes on the beloved claret of Bordeaux were raised to a trade-stifling level'. Minor typo: 'in a era' should read 'in an era'.

  • The section on Puglia above includes the following text: 'top quality Negroamaro may be blended with a small amounts of Malvasia Nera or other red grapes'. Minor typo: 'blended with a small amounts' should read 'blended with small amounts'.

  • Another section of text from the section on Campania: 'Falanghina also excels in the panoramic coastal DOCs of Campi Flegrei and Costa d'Amalfi, where is it blended with the rare white Biancolella grape to produce a mellower and lusher style of wine.' Minor typo: 'where is it blended' should read 'where it is blended'.

  • The section on Campania above includes the following text: 'The wine at the time was sweet or dry, strong enough to be inflammable, and probably produced from the Aminean grape, a Greek import known today as Greco.' Alas, English is a perplexing language where flammable and inflammable mean the same thing, but my sense is that flammable the more frequent choice, per Merriam-Webster. More importantly, however, this text asserts a Greek origin to the grape Greco, though commonly claimed (due to the name) I thought the jury might still be out on that one. But the text would make me think that the Greek origins of Greco are without question.

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