Vernaccia & Vin Santo
Tuscany is red country — but it makes a crisp white the popes drank and one of Italy's greatest dessert wines, aged in attics from dried grapes. Here's Vernaccia di San Gimignano, the coastal whites, and the Vin Santo ritual with cantucci to dip.
Ask anyone about Tuscan wine and they'll name reds — Chianti, Brunello, the Super Tuscans you just met on the Bolgheri coast. Fair enough: this is red country to its bones. But it would be a mistake to leave without the whites, because Tuscany hides two things almost nobody expects. A crisp, historic white that popes drank. And one of the greatest dessert wines in Italy, made in attics from dried grapes and served with a biscuit to dip. Both are worth your attention. Both are easy to miss.
Vernaccia, and the town of towers
Start with the white that has a name. Vernaccia di San Gimignano comes from the hills around San Gimignano — the medieval hill town bristling with stone towers that you can see from half of Tuscany. It's a dry white made from the Vernaccia grape: pale, crisp, citrus and green almond, with a faintly bitter twist on the finish that stops it being simple. Serious versions gain texture and a little richness; everyday ones are just clean, savoury and food-ready.
What Vernaccia really has is pedigree. It was the first Italian wine granted a DOC, back in 1966 — the wine chosen to lead the whole modern appellation system — and later climbed to DOCG. Reach back further and it turns up in Dante, and at Renaissance papal tables. For a white to have that much history in a country obsessed with its reds tells you it was never an afterthought.
Beyond Vernaccia, Tuscany's whites are mostly quiet workhorses — everyday Trebbiano and Malvasia across the interior — with one bright exception on the coast: Vermentino, saline and citrusy, thriving in the sea air of the Maremma and Bolgheri littoral. That's the white to drink with Tuscan seafood, and the one to remember when you reach the coast in Part 7.
Vin Santo: the holy wine in the attic
Now the jewel. Vin Santo — "holy wine" — is Tuscany's traditional sweet wine, and the way it's made is half the romance. After harvest, bunches of white grapes, chiefly Trebbiano and Malvasia, are set to dry — laid on mats or hung from rafters in an airy loft — for months, until they shrivel to raisins and their sugar concentrates. Then they're pressed, and the thick juice is sealed into caratelli, tiny barrels often holding just tens of litres, frequently seeded with the "mother" lees carried down from older casks.
Those barrels go up into the vinsantaia, the attic, and stay there for years — baking through summer, chilling through winter, fermenting and ageing at their own glacial pace with no one intervening. What comes out is amber to deep bronze, intense and long-lived: dried apricot, walnut, honey, orange peel, a note of caramel. Nothing about it is industrial. It's a wine made by patience and the weather.
Vin Santo is fermented by the seasons and aged in the roof. It's the most Tuscan wine there is, and almost nobody outside Tuscany has tasted a great one.
There's a rarer, rosier version worth chasing: Occhio di Pernice, "eye of the partridge," made from red grapes — chiefly Sangiovese — rather than white. Deeper, richer, scarcer and dearer, it's the connoisseur's Vin Santo.
The ritual, and where to taste it
Vin Santo comes with an instruction built in: cantucci, the hard almond biscuits from Prato. You dunk the biscuit into the glass to soften it, then eat — the dry crunch against the sweet, nutty wine, the standard end to a Tuscan meal. It's a small ceremony every trattoria performs, and once you've done it properly you'll want it after every dinner. For where Vin Santo sits among Italy's dried-grape sweet wines, see the passito & sweet wines guide.
To taste the very top of the style, go to Avignonesi in Montepulciano, which you met in Part 4. Its Vin Santo — aged the best part of a decade in minuscule caratelli, made in tiny quantities, and its Occhio di Pernice rarer still — is one of the most coveted bottles in all of Italy. If you find it on a list, that's the trip's quiet luxury. Book the estate ahead.
We've done the classic map — the three great Sangioveses, the coastal rule-breakers, the whites and the holy wine. One corner of Tuscany is left, and it's the wildest: a broad, empty, sea-facing south that was malarial marshland within living memory and is now the region's value frontier and the place ambitious money is quietly buying land. Cowboys, thermal springs, Vermentino and the "next Bolgheri." That's the Maremma, and Part 7 rides out to the coast.
Common questions
Vernaccia di San Gimignano — the region's flagship white, from the famous towered hill town of San Gimignano. It's a dry, crisp, faintly almond-bitter white made from the Vernaccia grape, and it has real history: it was the first Italian wine to receive a DOC in 1966 and later earned DOCG status. Beyond it, Tuscany makes coastal Vermentino, everyday Trebbiano and Malvasia, and — the real jewel — the sweet Vin Santo. But if a Tuscan white has a name to know, it's Vernaccia.
Vin Santo — 'holy wine' — is Tuscany's traditional sweet wine, made from grapes (mainly Trebbiano and Malvasia) that are dried on mats or hung in airy lofts for months after harvest to concentrate their sugar. The shrivelled grapes are pressed and the juice is sealed into small barrels called caratelli, often with a bit of aged 'mother' lees, and left in an attic (the vinsantaia) to ferment and age slowly for years through the seasons. The result is an amber, nutty, dried-fruit-and-honey wine of great intensity and long life.
Cantucci — the hard almond biscuits also called biscotti di Prato. The ritual is simple and completely Tuscan: you dunk the biscuit into the glass of Vin Santo to soften it, then eat. The wine's sweetness and the biscuit's dry crunch are made for each other. A good Vin Santo is also lovely with aged or blue cheese, or simply on its own after dinner as the thing that ends the meal.
'Eye of the partridge' — a rarer, rosier style of Vin Santo made with red grapes, chiefly Sangiovese, rather than the usual white Trebbiano and Malvasia. It's deeper in colour and often richer and more expensive, the connoisseur's version of Tuscany's holy wine, and one of the most sought-after sweet wines in Italy.
Glossary
- Vernaccia di San Gimignano
- Tuscany's best-known dry white, from the Vernaccia grape grown around the towered town of San Gimignano — historically important as the first Italian wine granted a DOC, in 1966.
- Vin Santo
- 'Holy wine' — Tuscany's traditional sweet wine, made from grapes dried after harvest, then aged for years in small sealed caratelli barrels in an attic. Amber, nutty and intense; served with cantucci.
- Caratelli
- The small barrels — often just tens of litres — in which Vin Santo ferments and ages slowly in the loft, frequently seeded with 'mother' lees carried from cask to cask over generations.
- Vinsantaia
- The airy attic or loft where the caratelli rest, exposed to the swing of the seasons — heat in summer, cold in winter — which drives the wine's very slow fermentation and ageing.