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A journey through the Chianti The wine routes in Tuscany
[Alice Whittle]
When driving through Tuscany, tourists will often come across signposts marked as strade del vino or wine routes. What does this term mean and how did it come about?We need to go back a bit into time to find out. Wine has always represented the most important drink in Tuscany, from ancient times. The Etruscans are thought to have been the first to produce wine, though it was more like our red vinegar, and which by Roman times became sweeter and more pleasant in taste.
After a long period of silence, wine thrust itself into the limelight again in the 19th century, when some of the important wine producing families like the Antinori, the Frescobaldi and the Serristori started cultivating vineyards on the sun-bathed and beautiful Tuscan hillsides.
Over the years the wine producers gradually managed to improve their produce more and more, to then started to export it so that it could also be appreciated abroad. As practically everyone now knows, the Chianti and other red Tuscan wines are quoted as being the finest wines in the world, though we should not forget that, above all in the last decades, the white wines that have begun to make their name, like for example the Vernaccia of San Gimignano, which has acquired the right to a D.O.C.G. (controlled and guaranteed origin) denomination.
Tuscany can offer a range of wines that includes 24 D.O.C. wines and 5 D.O.C.G. wines (as well as the Vernaccia and the world famous and highly prized Brunello of Montalcino). Apart from the Chianti, one of Italy’s best known wines, new wines and grapes are now being produced thus allowing Tuscany to compete with other wines produced elsewhere in the world.
14 wine routes are at present recognised in Tuscany as stated in the Regional Law 69 (1996): these itineraries follow routes characterised by the wine produced in a particular type of vineyard and by the local farms and cellars, open to the public, that produce it. A wine route, as prescribed by the Regional Law, is an "itinerary characterised by natural, cultural and historic attractions". With the aim of creating a homogenous and qualified wine tourism structure, the Law has laid down a series of guiding rules and standards that every wine route must possess to be entitled to earn this name. Each wine itinerary, to be found in all the provinces of Tuscany, is marked with special road signs indicating the towns and places of interest en route, like, for example, the Museums of Vines and Wine.
"...and yet I believe that a great deal of happiness comes to men who are born in places where good wine is to be found."
Leonardo da Vinci wrote these words, alluding to places like his hometown of Vinci, in the hills of Montalbano, where the earth produces genuine and natural products, as well as good company.
The tourist can enjoy a taste of this happiness by drinking a toast with glass of good.
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