Exhibiting Regions

What is Tuscany’s greatest export? Most people would immediately choose either wine—one of its eight DOCGs or its 34 DOCs, if not all of them combined--or its extra-virgin olive oil, for which it invented the category the world now esteems.

They’d be close, but in fact Tuscany’s greatest export, elusive and illusory, is the tantalizing Dream of Italy that has entranced the world for centuries. It is what Byron called “the fatal gift of beauty”; it is the land “where,” John Ruskin said, “the vines with their young leaves hang as if they were of thin beaten gold . . . and the spring skies have every one backgrounds of Fra Angelico.” I could go on, and indeed the poets and writers certainly did, but more to the point is what the Tuscans did.

They made it pay. "The Tuscans aren't tenors. They speak: they don't sing,” said the irascible Tuscan writer Curzio Malaparte. Indeed, they were practical people. They fell to work and made their wine and oil the “transportable Italy” that the world understands as totems of the Quality of Life.

Instead of resting on their laurels, the Tuscans kept on working. The Chianti of the 1950s and 1960s, the wine in the straw-bottomed fiasco, was Tuscany’s first global success, but when it became clear that Chianti had been damagingly diluted and counterfeited (even into the 1990s there was something called “Australian Chianti”), Tuscans made intense efforts to make its world-wide success into a world-class wine. Succeeding, they abandoned the fiasco, lest the new Chianti be mistaken for the old. Tuscany met the challenge of integrating new ways with old. Barriques, at first adopted wholesale, were later used more judiciously when it was seen that too much new wood smothered the delicacy of the Sangiovese grape. After much deliberation, Brunello di Montalcino’s wood-aging was reduced from four years to three when producers agreed the longer-aged wines were too austere. (Well, most of them agreed, so the regulations allow a fourth year as an option for those who think it necessary.)

Tuscany’s serene and dreamlike landscape represents heritage and tradition, but there’s always a restless dynamism underneath, an energy driving innovation and experimentation, bringing forth new wines and new directions. The Maremma goes from a malarial swamp to a font of fine reds; Morellino begins to assert itself; Cortona, once known only for one very modest white is revealed by patient investigation to be a fine site for Syrah and Merlot. Meanwhile, producers who regard the vine as their patrimony re-examine—often with surprising results—the like of Pugnitello, Barsaglina, Foglia Tonda and Morrellone: forgotten varieties on the cusp of extinction.

These delights are accessible to all, in the bottle and on the road, for Tuscany’s Strada del Vino is the one that sets the pace in Italian wine-tourism.

Regional Wine Appellations:

DOCG

Brunello di Montalcino
Carmignano
Chianti
Chianti Classico
Morellino di Scansano
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

DOC

Ansonica Costa dell'Argentario
Bianco della Valdinievole
Bianco dell'Empolese
Bianco di Pitigliano
Bianco Pisano di San Torpé
Bolgheri and Bolgheri Sassicaia
Candia dei Colli Apuani
Capalbio
Carmignano and Barco Reale di Carmignano
Colli dell'Etruria Centrale
Colli di Luni
Colline Lucchesi
Cortona
Elba
Montecarlo
Montecucco
Monteregio di Massa Marittima
Montescudaio
Moscadello di Montalcino
Orcia
Parrina
Pietraviva
Pomino
Rosso di Montalcino
Rosso di Montepulciano
San Gimignano
Sant'Antimo
Sovana
Terratico di Bibbona
Val d'Arbia
Val di Cornia
Valdichiana
Vin Santo del Chianti
Vin Santo del Chianti Classico
Vin Santo di Montepulciano

IGT

Alta Valle della Greve
Colli della Toscana centrale
Maremma Toscana
Toscano or Toscana
Val di Magra