Local Culture:
Wine in Italy - It's far more than a drink over dinner

About Francesco Gronchi Location: Volterra, Italy Website: www.tuscantour.com Francesco Gronchi lives in Tuscany and comes from a long line of  armchair commentators and social activists. He graduated from the University of Siena with a degree in Political Science, focusing on the Italian partisan resistence to nazi-facism during WWII and has worked as a researcher for the University of Pisa at the American Military Archives on massacres of Italian civilians carried out by the German army during WWII. Francesco lived for a few years in Washington, DC, before being lured back to Tuscany by plentiful good wine, his family's homegrown olive oil, and being able to laugh with friends of opposing political views over a drink, among other things.

How does one go about describing wine?

Wine can be good or less good, white or red, aged in oak or in stainless steel, DOC, DOCG, or table wine. But for a Tuscan it is also an essential part of our daily nutrition.

In Tuscany, a table is not set unless there is wine on it. Maybe a glass will suffice, but neither lunch nor dinner can be served without wine.

Wine strongly represents our Tuscan identity. Visitors can hardly miss the multitude of wine bars or enoteche in every town, even the smallest hamlets have some sort of a wine store. Today these enoteche are much changed from those of the past, in the days when tourism had not yet become an integral part of our economy.

But this doesn’t mean the quality of the wine or of the locale has diminished, or even that they have transformed themselves in an attempt to lure tourists. The fact remains that the men and women who run these enoteche are true wine-lovers, as are those who make wine.

Wine has a very important social function in Tuscany. Although this function has slowly diminished over the years, it has remained quite strong in the “old-fashioned” neighborhoods of big cities and most of all in the small towns and hamlets that dot the Tuscan countryside.

We sit down with our friends – and simple acquaintances – to chat over a bottle of wine. We talk about matters both serious and not-so-serious but we talk and we debate and we laugh and we poke fun at each other for hours.

When we are feeling less loquacious we drink wine as we play cards in the winter, or bocce ball in the summer. When a friend comes to visit we always offer him a coffee (espresso, it goes without saying) or a glass of wine. When we are the guests at someone’s house for dinner we bring a bottle of wine, and wine is our indispensable companion even when we go into the country for a hike, to hunt or to fish.

I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that wine is to Tuscans what tea is to the British. Necessary. Ubiquitous. A part of life, like the air we breathe.
Some years ago farmers who headed out into the fields at dawn for a hard day of work brought with them a hearty breakfast, accompanied by a sturdy glass and a straw-wrapped bottle of wine, sheathed in wet rags to keep it cool. Even in the unrelenting August heat, wine had to be there. In special circumstances the wine would be mixed with water, half and half.

In centuries past, when the only way to ensure water was fit for drinking was to boil it, wine was considered a “safe” beverage as few bacteria could survive once the grape juice had been fermented into wine. And thus adding a bit of wine to your water could reduce the risk of catching something from impure water. So wine also served a medicinal function, in a sense, and it didn’t really matter how good it was.

Until about 30 years ago, wine was also an integral part of the nutrition of Tuscan children. When I was growing up, one of the most popular snacks was “pane, vino e zucchero”: a slice of hard bread dunked in water to make it soft again, and then sprinkled with red wine and sugar.

Even today, Tuscans who come from farming families make their own wine and often with great pride they offer up a glass to innocent visitors. I say innocent to imply a victim, as farmer’s wine is certainly genuine, but when it comes to taste … let’s just say it usually isn’t that pleasant (there are rare exceptions).

Let’s say that you already know the wine you’re being offered is terrible. The problem is there isn’t anything you can do about it. You must accept it and also say it’s wonderful. The trick is finding a way to refuse a second glass without offending the farmer who toiled in the blazing sun to make this concoction… who probably already knows his wine isn’t the world’s greatest vintage.

Another traditional Tuscan product that visitors should be warned about is our homemade “moonshine” grappa. A genuine product, no doubt about it, but it is so strong it could probably serve as jet fuel. Each year my uncle gives me a couple of bottles of his own grappa, which usually end up being used to light our barbeque. That said, Tuscan grappas distilled by professionals can be excellent. I do drink my fair share.

Wine is everywhere in Tuscany, but good wine - especially for modern and international standards - is made by serious wineries, by people who not only love wine but who study wine and work with it day in and day out. Transforming grapes into good wine is no simple job, it can’t be improvised. It is a job for specialists who put science and technology to use in their cellars.

Wine is not, however, made solely in the cellar. Excellent wine is “made” by how it is treated in the vineyard, from carefully studying the soil, the exposure to sun, precipitation, the precise altitudes, winds, the direction that a particular slope faces, the distance from the sea, and dozens of other parameters. These parameters are used to determine what sub-varietal will be planted - just for the local Sangiovese variety, the predominant grape in Chianti, and Brunello, there are more than 30 different subvarietals. And of course specialized hands to delicately care for, and “read” the vines is essential.

But let’s leave the technical matters of making wine to the oenologists and talk about the finished product. For a sommelier wine can have dozens if not hundreds of different colors and notes and aromas, but for a Tuscan wine falls into one of two categories: good and not-so-good… any other distinction is just “fried air.” Of course good and not-so-good are also subjective, and this distinction alone leads to endless discussion about a bottle of wine.  

Tuscan wine, and Chianti in particular, has been exported to America for over a century now. Chianti is almost a household name in America and often has the connotation, especially for non-wine drinkers, of a wine produced for quantity and not quality… a bit like the old adage that FIAT stands for “Fix It Again Tony”. This judgment, I can assure you, is no longer true (both for the wine and the car), but it does have its basis in historical fact.

When Chianti was first exported to America, in particular to New York, at the end of the 1800s, vintners did not yet know how to conserve and stabilize wine. Today most wineries add sulphites (which occur naturally in all wines, but in small quantities) to their wine so it will last longer and be more stable, especially when exposed to the trauma of changing temperatures and altitudes (like in a trans-Atlantic shipping). But a hundred years ago these properties were not known so to make sure their wine didn’t turn into vinegar, Chianti vintners used a different technique to stabilize their wine destined for exportation. They would hermetically seal the wine bottles and then put them on the roof tiles of their house, leaving them there for a full year. In this way the strong temperature changes between day and night, summer and winter, worked to “pasteurize” the wine which they called tegolato, or “tiled” wine.

But this process not only stabilized the wine, it also changed its flavor quite radically. And thus the Chianti known to most Americans was quite different, and simply not as good, as the Chianti uncorked locally. Tegolato wine is still produced by a handful of Chianti wineries, a curiosity appreciated by wine buffs for its historical importance and unique flavor.

Another anecdote linking Tuscany, its wine and America that many people do not know has as its protagonist Filippo Mazzei. Known by American historians as Philip Mazzei or Philip Mazzie, this Tuscan man could actually be included in the ranks of the American founding-fathers, as a shaper (and writer) of the Declaration of Independence. Mazzei was a close friend of the first five American Presidents: George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe and, most of all, a confidant of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson referred to Mazzei as his inspiration for matters political and personal, and the two were not only neighbors in Virginia but also business partners and correspondents until Mazzei’s death. A 40-cent US postage stamp was issued in 1980 to commemorate the 250 years passed since this birth of this patriot.

But other than an Italian name, what links Filippo Mazzei to Tuscany? Born and raised in Tuscany, he was an important Tuscan wine producer and his family continues to produce some of the most important Tuscan wines even today on their Fonterutoli estate (and others).

So what conclusion would a Tuscan draw from all of this? We’d say that it just goes to show that he who loves wine loves his neighbor, and can’t help but be a good person and an inspiration!