Southern Tuscany

Cortona is a cute-as-a-button medieval hill town in southern Tuscany, near the border with Umbria. In this part of Italy, the dominant grape is Sangiovese, and just the name of the best wines made from it gets me excited: Chianti, Brunello (di Montalcino), Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.

Not only are the wines fantastic, they also have a great wine culture, promoting local, small production wines, and seemingly every sub-area produces a local wine which can be found in their shops and restaurants. Of course the food is also fantastic….a multitude of cheeses, with many variations of pecorino being the top of the heap; anything pork, or here, wild boar (cinghiale), porcini mushrooms, pastas, fresh produce, maybe the best olive oil(s) anywhere…oh and beef from the chianina cattle. See fiorentina steak, below.

In my opinion what characterizes the wines of Tuscany is their complementary nature to the food of the land. High in acidity, to offset tangy tomato dishes and sauces, spicy, medium in weight, make them delicious food wines. With the fiorentina, we had a beautiful Brunello from 2016; plum, prunes and dried cherry on the nose, with a variety of spices, and even a bit of licorice after it was opened up for close to an hour. A Riserva Brunello would have been even richer, also close to double the price, so even at €62 our bottle was delicious.

A day trip to another medieval hill town (Montepulciano), and to visit a couple of wineries with historic underground cave/cellars. Fun! As you walk up into the town through the ancient gates, you’ll see plenty of places selling, tasting and shipping wines for your pleasure. I visited De’Ricci and Tolosa, at the recommendation of Antonio, whose family owns the oldest wine store in Cortona (Enoteca Molesini: free wine tastings Thursday afternoons!).

I’m not gonna go into depth for the tasting, and given that the wines do best in context of the food they’re paired with, I’ll just say that that they are of high quality and true to the varietal character (i.e. Sangiovese).

And while staying in Cortona, I attended one of the Molesini’s winemaker dinners, with a Sicilian winery Principi di Butera, participating. The food from La Loggetta was excellent, especially the simple pasta with minced lamb in natural juice and pomegranate seeds, paired with the best wine of the night, a Syrah, not a traditional Sicilian grape….amazing!