Marc Millon reviews On Tuscany: From Brunello to Bolgheri, Wine Tales from the Heart of Italy, compiled by Susan Keevil.
Like the Italian Renaissance that began mainly in Florence and marked a watershed transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, the renaissance of modern Italian wine also began in Tuscany and similarly marked a movement from more antiquated methods of production and marketing to innovative and even revolutionary new ways of seeing, of thinking, of doing. If the Renaissance harked back to classical antiquity, the story of the renaissance of Italian wine, as centered on Tuscany, also needs to look to the past to understand the present. It is a story that begins some two and a half millennia ago, and it is multifaceted, richly layered, and complex. This is a story of big characters and humble farmers; of the utter transformation of a timeless and classic landscape; of discoveries, inventions, revolutionaries, and mavericks; of grape varieties, winemaking techniques, and the vagaries of nature and weather. It’s a tale of families who have been wine growers for more than 800 years and of others who transplanted themselves to this fertile land mere decades ago, coming from other areas, regions, sectors, countries to make Tuscany their home.
To tell this story in a way that does it justice requires not one but myriad voices, including some of the greatest authors and wine writers of our time, whose collective thoughts and insights connect the past with today, give context to the immense changes that have taken place within a relatively short space of time, and also look to the future. Susan Keevil, Académie du Vin Library’s editorial director, has done a masterly job of compiling a rich collection of writings into book form, On Tuscany: From Brunello to Bolgheri, Wine Tales from the Heart of Italy, the latest compilation volume in the outstanding Académie du Vin Library series. In doing so, Keevil has shown herself to be an editor with not only great knowledge and passion for her subject but also great sensitivity and affection for Tuscany and its wines.
The spirit of the people
It would be logical, in presenting a collection of essays about a wine region as rich and historically important as Tuscany, to dive straight into the story of its wine. But Keevil leads us there gently, opening with a passage from Curzio Malaparte’s long essay Maledetti Toscani (Thos Cursed Tuscans) in which he describes the “wild winds of Tuscany”: the grecale (northeast), libeccio (southwest), scirocco (southeast), and tramontana (north)—natural forces each with their own character that also reflect something of the character of the Tuscans themselves. Then he writes of another minor wind, a secret wind: “To breathe this wind is not easy: you have to be born a Tuscan. [It] has a slightly bitter base, like our olive oil, like true Chianti, like the fish in the Arno, like the wit, irony, laughter, and easy urbanity of the Tuscans, who are witty, ironic, smiling, correct in manner and in work, but, at bottom, how bitter!” Keevil neither agrees nor disagrees, she simply orders and presents, lets words speak for themselves, knowing that to understand a wine region, you also need to understand something of the soul and spirit of its people. She includes an extract from DH Lawrence’s Etruscan Places to give context to the importance of wine here in antiquity—not because Lawrence is necessarily accurate historically but because he revels in the discovery through the murals of Etruscan burial tombs of an unknown and long-ago world where men and women caressed each other with affection, and where the pleasure of wine was a gift to be looked forward to not only in life but in an imagined after-world beyond.
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It is important to know that the Tuscany of today, the “Chiantishire” we know and love, is entirely a recent invention; for centuries before, the land itself was husbanded by an ancient and effective method of sharecropping known as the mezzadria. This was not a land of specialized agriculture. Rather, the mixed nature of subsistence farming meant that vines were often trained up trees or other living supports; the ground below was kept for cultivation of vegetables, fruit, wheat, tobacco; and a pig was kept, to be killed in November, the cured pork meat or salumi salted to be conserved, the best pieces, such as the prosciutto to be offered to the padrone, the landowner, around Christmastime. This era is still within living memory, because the mezzadria, after some 800 years, was phased out as late as the 1970s. Those times, picturesque though they may seem, are not to be romanticized; nor should we kid ourselves that the wine produced under primitive conditions was anything approaching the sublime. In the essay “Tuscany Before It Changed,” our most eloquent of wine writers Hugh Johnson pulls no punches, stating, “At breakfast, the farmer passed round an old fiasco, its straw purple with use, to fill thick tumblers with last year’s wine. It was black as night, bitter, sour, and sweet at the same time. It washed down hard bread and sweet grapes in handfuls. If good wine ever came of this primitive way of working, it was by accident or lucky chance.”
Tuscany certainly was once a wine land that produced great wines—in antiquity under the Etruscans and the Romans, through the Renaissance when artists specified particular wines as part of their payment, and even up until the time of phylloxera. Yet somewhere along the way, not helped by the devastation of World War II, an ancient vinous patrimony was lost. In large measure, On Tuscany: From Brunello to Bolgheri recounts the story of how that lost patrimony was rediscovered and remade.
How can I not return?
The late Nicolas Belfrage MW, one of the early and most passionate champions of Italian wines, explains in his essay “Bacchus Loves the Hills” how Tuscany is the almost perfect wine land, with ideal conditions for the production of great wines: climate (Mediterranean meets continental); altitude—how Sangiovese, the great grape of Tuscany, thrives best at altitudes of between 650 and 1,650ft (200–500m) above sea level; exposure and soils; and the influences of mountains, as well as bodies of water. Grape varieties, both native and the so-called international, are vital to the character of the wines of Tuscany, and there are essays that extoll the virtues of Sangiovese (Jancis Robinson MW and Walter Speller), Cabernet Sauvignon (Hugh Johnson), Canaiolo (James Lawrence), and Ciliegiolo (Belfrage). Emily O’Hare’s essay “Hidden in Plain Sight” urges us not to forget that, almost overlooked amid an ocean of red wine, white grape varieties have long been historically important here: Vernaccia (the only wine mentioned by Dante in his Divine Comedy), Moscadello (which was the predominant variety in Montalcino, long before the appearance of Brunello), Trebbiano Toscano, Malvasia del Chianti, Vermentino, and Ansonica are grape varieties that I believe we will be hearing much more about in years to come.
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This book tells the story of the transformation of Tuscan wine from a rustic peasant drink described so vividly by Hugh Johnson into legendary vintages that today stand proudly alongside the world’s greatest. This is a transformation that happened relatively quickly—certainly within my own professional lifetime of four decades of travel to this beautiful region. David Gleave MW’s essay “Super Times” tells the story of how—after the demise of the mezzadria and the exodus of farm workers from the land to work in the factories of Prato and Pistoia—there was a crisis and also an opportunity. It was at this moment, in 1966, that Marchese Piero Antinori took over his family company, which had been making wine since 1385. Gleave relates how Antinori recognized that change was needed, for great red wine could never be made with white grapes in the mix, a requirement of the old Chianti discipline. An entirely new way of thinking was needed, employing winemaking and aging techniques, and even grape varieties, that were used in France. Thus Tignanello, the first Super-Tuscan was born, classified only as a lowly vino da tavola but able to command prices higher than the most exalted DOC wines. Tignanello paved the way for a new generation of Super-Tuscan wines. Jane Anson’s tasting notes “Wine into Words” gives a concise sensorial description of some of the greatest. Federico Moccia writes in “Beauty in Bolgheri” of the creation of an entirely new wine land on the Tuscan seaboard, now producing some of Italy’s and the world’s greatest wines, from mainly international grape varieties, as well as native, cultivated on stony lands formerly used primarily for the rearing of horses.
Carla Capalbo writes of “Three Chianti Revolutions.” Bill Nesto MW and Frances Di Savino take us along “Chianti’s Hidden Roads.” In “Hard Scrabble to the Highest Heights,” Monty Waldin charts the rise of modern Montalcino as one of Italy’s most prestigious wine destinations. Italian MWs Gabriele Gorelli and Andrea Lonardi give a masterclass in the subzones of Montalcino in “Wandering and Wondering in Montalcino.” Nicolas Belfrage extols one of Tuscany’s greatest Sangiovese zones, Montepulciano, in his essay “Third of the Greats.” The human element, always so important in the world of wine, is covered through portraits of some of Tuscany’s greatest winemakers and wine families, such as Fiona Morrison’s story of the 800-year-old Frescobaldi wine dynasty, which she recounts with intimacy and affection.
And there is so much more: An “A–Z of Amazing Tuscans”; Ruth Rogers’s essay “River of Goodness,” explaining how she and her late partner Rose Gray brought the simplicity of Tuscan cuisine to Hammersmith in London; Elizabeth Berger’s homage to Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil in “Celebrating the Tuscan Olive”; and a final essay from the most literate of contemporary wine writers, Andrew Jefford, who writes an “Elegy to an Italian Autumn,” finishing with the words, “How can I not return?” How, indeed?
The role of an editor/compiler in a volume as rich as this should not be underestimated. Susan Keevil has done a masterful job in selecting and compiling such a rich and comprehensive body of writing, as well as in ordering the essays in a way that makes it a joy to meander through the book. This is a brilliant addition to Académie du Vin Library’s ongoing collection of compilation volumes and a must-read for all who love Tuscany—not only its wines but also its culture, history, art, and gastronomy.
On Tuscany: From Brunello to Bolgheri, Wine Tales from the Heart of Italy
Compiled by Susan Keevil
Published by Académie du Vin Library; 272 pages; hardback; $47.50 / £35
