Tuscany is world renowned for its red wine production, but far lesser known are the white wines of Tuscany. Vernaccia is Tuscany’s only DOCG white wine varietal, with a history that dates back to at least The 12 th Century. Vernaccia found a golden era during The Renaissance, when Florentine hierarchy such as Michaelangelo & The Medicis valued Vernaccia as a sophisticated luxury item. Closely associated with the medieval hilltown of San Gimignano and its sandstone soil, Vernaccia is a perfect food wine, and discerning consumers would be wise to seek out mineral rich Vernaccia as a more worthy everyday drinking wine vs. the much more popular Pinot Grigio. #vernaccia #sangimignano #italianwine #tuscanywine #winehistory
So what’s the grape Explorer talking about today well one of my most passionate areas and actually if you’re following the grape Explorer you know that I love and adore Italian wines and I think that I could spend probably the next 30 to 40 years talking about the grapes that actually exist there there’s
Well over a thousand different grapes in Italy but today we’re going to highlight one which is called veracha and veracha is a grape that is uh very very quite famous in the area called San jimano and we have our beautiful map that we brought out here today and if we take
This orange line right here you can see Bacci toan jimano and the line goes right over to here and you see this gold colored area here which is amongst all the red there’s a big reason for that and uh most of Tuscan wines if we all know like kantes and brunell’s and
Super tuskin Reds I would say well over 95% of the wines that are produced in Italy are red wines but they’re are some white wines of note and of course this is one of the oldest the the oldest records of of veracha go back to uh the
12th century and uh some of the most famous uh people the Michi would present uh bottles of Racha to the pope at the time and um we all obviously know Michelangelo who you know was quite famous um you know in his contract whenever he was uh whenever he was
Commissioned to do art and especially like the cine Chapel part of his contractual agreement was he needed to have a a daily supply of vachi to San jimana which was his favorite wine so we always call it the wine of Kings the wine of poets the wine of historians and
When we’re talking about Italy we know that you know keante and red wine is king So This is called the queen of Tuscany with obvious uh notes because we’re talking about the nobility of uh of Tuscany here and how great these wines were so I broke out a bottle here
Today that I’m tasting and you know uh I went to a wine merchant very notable wine merchant one day and we were talking about veracha and he said oh ha you know people bought that wine 15 10 years ago nobody really buys veracha and I said really why and he said Well
Everybody’s drinking pinogregio and I and I you know I I told him I said geez have they ever really tasted veracha to know the differences between you know veracha which is a docg and we’re going to explain that as opposed just a simple pinio that doesn’t really have a lot of
Character and he said no he said apparently people don’t really know so this wine was the first DOC wine what I’m talking about doc Baro baresco kante Classico these are all do wines and uh this was the first wine to get that status and then they even went
A little higher and in 1993 they became the only white wine that has the the status of Doc G which was amazing we’re talking about nearly 30 years ago and there’s still nobody’s paying attention to these beautiful wines and you know I got a little bit of scent of orange
Blossom right off the top of the notes um the soil composition here is sandstone I know that’s kind of interesting because of course I love Limestone and I like chalk and I like all these things that give expression so in San jimano high percentage of sandstone in the soil and that that’s
What gives these wines that perfume that lift that bracing acidity and you have that all these beautiful like uh scents of white fruits and uh flowers but when you taste the wine oh that’s lovely you get all that lemongrass you get beautiful Citrus tones you get that lovely acidity that
Just begs you to come back for more this is a food wine I would say this we be great with a piece of fish or a piece of chicken or something really really interesting but listen I adore and I love San jimano I love the the town so
If you’re ever traveling to Tuscany and you want to get away from forenz and drive out to a beautiful place go to San jimano can this is verac to San jimano and this is the grape Explorer talking about really really great Italian wines