Snippets from the Italian Scene
New Red Wines from San
Gimignano
The other wine-related news is that San Gimignano, which is well known for its Vernaccia, one of Tuscany's better white wines (and certainly the one with the longest standing traditions), has now begun to produce red wines as well under its own name, rather than as Chianti Colli Senesi. Things are still being ironed out because the DOC commission didn't give them precisely what they asked for, but there are two kinds of San Gimignano Rosso:
- The first is a blend, with 50% Sangiovese and 50% other varietals, which include Cabernet Franc or Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Pinot Nero, and so on; they plan to raise the minimum Sangiovese to 70%, with a maximum of 20% French varietals and the remainder local varietals such as Colorino or Canaiolo (this is one of the adjustments they want to make to the DOC).
- The second is a varietal wine, made with at least 80% of the declared varietal, which can be Sangiovese, Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah, or Pinot Nero. Sangiovese is Tuscany's great grape, and some very nice things will come of it, while the others can scale to considerable heights too; I find the inclusion of Syrah especially interesting because one doesn't see as much of it in Tuscany. On the other hand, I'm a little less convinced by Pinot Nero -- Central Tuscany is too hot for it, or has been in the past decade, and the gripes therefore ripen too soon, before the components that make Burgundian wines so interesting have time to develop. So of the various kinds it's likely the weakest, through no fault of the winemakers.
I tasted a number of the new wines at a dinner organized during Vinitaly, and came away impressed -- definitely some new things to look out for. The other thing we enjoyed at the dinner was a risotto made with saffron, and it merits a brief aside. One wouldn't think it now, but San Gimignano was renowned for its saffron in the middle ages, exporting it both to the west and to the east (one of the few spices to go in that direction), and indeed the towers that are now San Gimignano's major attraction were financed by the saffron trade. It turns out that saffron had many uses other than as a spice:
- Sienese and Florentine painters used it as a pigment in their paints
- It was used as a medicine, to treat all sorts of things including the plague.
- Salaries, especially of mercenaries serving San Gimignano, were paid in saffron.
- It was used to corrupt: The Bishop of Volterra bought off a Papal envoy with a bag of saffron, and there is also a record of a Florentine magistrate who refused to be bought off, though we don't know if the refusal came from honesty or the insufficiency of the bribe.
In any case, growing saffron is extraordinarily labor intensive, and as plantations in the European colonies began to produce it in the 17th and 18th centuries San Gimignano's production declined, almost to nothing before a group of farmers launched a program to revive the crop in the early 1990s.
For more info on San Gimignano, check the town's website, and don't miss the saffron page. And for more info on Vernaccia, check their site. You might also want to check my San Gimignano itinerary.
A presto,
Kyle
Phillips
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