Tuscany – a short travel guide

The weather is getting better and many of us are turning our thoughts to travel. Every now and again I write wine travel articles for my friends at the excellent 3D Wines Experience wine club and they print them in their Uncorked Magazine. Well, I thought that some of my readers here would enjoy them too, so I will publish them on here in a slow trickle.

My first piece for 3D Wines was about Tuscany and while it isn’t comprehensive it does cover a good swathe of lovely places in Tuscany’s, so I hope that it comes in handy for some of you.

Wine map of Tuscany – click for a larger view.

Tuscany has been attracting visitors for hundreds of years. It has everything from sun, sea and sand to some of the most romantic towns and cities in the world. It is a place that you can visit time and again and yet always find something new to excite you.

Tuscany is home to many famous wines, but Chianti remains its beating heart. The term Chianti was first used to define the hilly area area around Radda, Gaiole and Castellina and is thought to have been the name of an Etruscan family. This is the heartland of Chianti, where it all began and today it’s the core of the Chianti Classico D.O.C.g., but the whole Chianti area is worth exploring.

Castellina in Chianti.

Castellina
Castellina in Chianti is small and still has the feel of a mediaeval walled town. It is a joy to wander along the charming main street – Via Ferruccio – and the Via della Volte, an amazing vaulted, passage now home to shops and restaurants. The main square – Piazza del Comune – is dominated by the Rocca di Castellina castle which houses the Museum of Etruscan Archeology. This is a real gem and if it whets your appetite to learn more about this ancient culture, there is the stunning Etruscan tomb of Montecalvario a few minutes walk away.

It can be very hot here, so some amazing, homemade ice cream from the Antica Deliza Gelateria is highly recommended and almost reason enough to come to Castellina – do try the lemon and sage. If you need something more substantial the Antica Trattoria la Torre serves very good traditional food and is right in the main square.

Hotel Colle Etrusco Salviolpi.

Ristorante Albergaccio di Castellina.

Just outside the town is the Hotel Colle Etrusco Salviolpi an old country house turned into a welcoming B&B hotel complete with swimming pool, while the nearby Ristorante Albergaccio di Castellina provides high class Tuscan food and a wine list to match.

The rolling hills of the Colli Senesi.

Siena
Chianti Colli Senesi, as you might imagine is produced in the hills around Sienna. Once Florence’s equal as a city state, Siena ultimately lost out politically to its rival in the north, but in every other respect is by far the winner. Siena was never the centre of Renaissance intrigue, or Italy’s capital and so it remains small, with just 53,000 people its population is barely a seventh of Florence. This amazing, compact city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose buildings are almost all the same colour – terra di Siena or ‘Siena earth’ which makes it seem very beautiful.

Piazza del Campo Siena.

Do spend some time in the Piazza del Campo, this huge piazza is used as the racetrack for the Palio horse race twice a year and is lined with cafés, restaurants, gelaterias and market stalls. Make sure that you climb the Torre del Mangia, the bell tower overlooking the Piazza, heavy going in the heat, but the view is worth it as the whole city opens up before you.

The Duomo, or Siena Cathedral, is not only stunning in itself as it contains bas-reliefs by Donatello, but the site also includes the Museo dell’Opera dell Duomo which houses masterpieces such as Duccio’s Maestà. Once you have absorbed all the art another panoramic view awaits you from the terrace of the Il Facciatone tower.

Every Wednesday there is a lively market around the Fortezza Mediceana, where food, wine, antiques, animals and clothes are all for sale and it is a great place to watch the locals going about their lives.

Torre del Mangia Siena.

As you might imagine Siena is bursting with places to eat and it is hard to make a mistake, but my favourite is the Grotta di Santa Caterina di Bagoda which has been run by former Palio jockey Pierino Fagnani since 1973. This place is wonderfully atmospheric and fun with a great wine list and a very traditional menu. Try Pici – a thick hand rolled spaghetti which is only made in Siena and often served with a rich wild boar sauce. This would also be a good place to try some Panforte for dessert, with a glass of Vin Santo perhaps?

Looking down on the Piazza del Campo Siena.

Staying in Siena isn’t always easy as the hotels are usually very old, small and lack air-conditioning, while many of them are up several floors with no lift. The Hotel Duomo is pretty central, air-conditioned and has wonderful views from most rooms, but like many hotels in Siena it does lack parking. If you are seeking something more luxurious then the 5 star Grand Hotel Continental Siena occupies a magnificent 17th century Palazzo once owned by Pope Alexander VII. What’s more their Enoteca SaporDivino is a superb wine bar in the cellar that has to be experienced.

Florence.

The Duomo in Florence, beautiful by day and night.

A colourful procession in Florence.

Further afield – Firenze
I suppose that Florence must be at the heart of many trips to Tuscany, so I should mention some of my favourite delights to be found there. Harry’s Bar was opened on the banks of the Arno in 1952 by a friend of Giuseppe Cipriani who created the original in Venice and it appears to be unchanged. It is so elegant and cosmopolitan that as you sip your Bellini you half expect Clark Gable to appear arm in arm with Marilyn Monroe.

More traditional fare is available at the nearby Cantinetta Antinori which is housed on the ground floor of the ancient Antinori family palazzo. This beautiful place offers a small menu of classical Tuscan cuisine together with an enormous list of wines made by Antinori and their friends throughout the world. You can even try all their Super-Tuscans by the glass.

Trattoria Marione

Both of those are delightful and swanky and perfect if your wallet is full, but if you are after some good food and charming local colour on a tighter budget then the wonderfully bustling Trattoria Marione is nearby in the Via della Spade. The check table cloths, Chianti flasks on the tables and salamis hanging over the bar might make you think it’s a tourist trap, but I have only ever known locals to be in there and they always seem to be happily tucking into wonderful traditional Tuscan food in abundance – try the tagliatelle sul Cinghiale – tagliatelle with wild boar.

Florence is also known for its colourful Fiaschetteria or Vinerie, traditional wine bars that are often no more than a hole in the wall. The upmarket Enoteche are a more salubrious update on the theme, often quite smart and serving an array of wine together with stuzzichini, snacks or appetisers of Crostini, Salami and Affettati – mixed cured meats.

Piazza Napoleone, Lucca.

Walking Lucca’s walls.

Lucca
Far from being filthy, Lucca is a delightful walled town a little north east of Pisa. You can walk all around the walls and see the town before you venture in to the maze of winding streets, some of which look as though they are stuck in the Renaissance, while others like Via Fillungo boast an impressive array of luxury shops – as with Florence jewellery and leather goods are the things to buy here. The oval shaped Piazza Anfiteatro was once the ancient town’s Roman amphitheatre. This is a beautiful space and it is wonderful to soak up all the history for a while in one of the many bars.

Lucca from the air – you can clearly see the walls and fortifications – click for a larger view

Lucca boasts one of my favourite family run restaurants. The Trattoria da Leo has been in the Via Tegrimi since 1974 and is a delightful place to enjoy delicious, simple Tuscan food and while away an hour or two. It is an unpretentious, but totally genuine place that lists just two wines, both red – Vino Toscano at 12.5˚ in either quarter or half litre carafes or the local Vino Colline Lucchesi in bottles.

If you find yourself in need of intellectual stimulation, Puccini was born in Lucca and his house in the Corte San Lorenzo is now a wonderful museum. After which you surely deserve an ice-cream and luckily the Gelateria Santini Sergio is nearby and has been making superb gelato on the premises since 1916 – do try the chocolate and orange.

Just go there
There is so much to enjoy in Tuscany that nothing can really do it justice other than going there and seeing these places as well as Pisa, San Gimignano, San Miniato, Livorno, Pistoia, Elba, Montepulciano, Montalcino and all those other little towns you would stop in along the way and remember for ever more.

Not only is everywhere a feast for the eyes, but every corner of Tuscany is home to something that you can actually feast on. Internationally famous wines, local wines, superb olive oils, honey, hams, cheeses, salamis, mushrooms, meats, herbs, breads and sweets abound – no wonder I am so drawn to the place.

Useful Addresses:

Antica Trattoria la Torre
Piazza del Comune15
53011 Castellina In Chianti
+39 (0) 57- 774-0236

Albergaccio di Castellina
Via Fiorentina, 63
53011 Castellina In Chianti
+39 (0) 57-774-1042

Grotta di Santa Caterina di Bagoda
Via della Galluzza, 26
53100 Siena
+39 (0) 57-728-2208

Harry’s Bar
22R Via Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci 
Firenze, Toscana 50123 
+39 (0) 55-239-6700
Cantinetta Antinori
Piazza Antinori 3
Firenze, Toscana 50123
+39 (0) 55-292-234

Trattoria Marione
Via della Spada 27R
Firenze, Toscana 50123
+39 (0) 55-247-56

Trattoria da Leo
Via Tegrimi 1
Lucca, Toscana 55100
+39 (0) 58-349-2236

 

Cork v3.0 – Cork Fights Back

Cork oaks with their trunks stripped – photo courtesy of Diam.

The cork or screw cap debate is getting interesting again – click here for an article that I wrote about it quite a few years ago. For many years I, along with many in the British wine trade, have long championed the use of screw cap over cork.

My main reason for doing so is that for a long time we had far too high a proportion of bottles that were corked. This happens when a cork is infected by a compound called trichloroanisole, TCA for short, and that gets passed on to the wine in the bottle, killing the fruit in the wine and making it smell and taste musty like mouldy cardboard.

A compelling second reason to favour screw caps is that with corks there is a significant amount of bottle variation as some give a better seal than others, so little bit of oxidation can occur making some bottles seem less vibrant and more muted than others.

Screwcaps do not get rid of all of this, it is possible to get TCA into a wine by another route, so I have had 4 ‘corked’ bottles sealed with screw caps. That is 4 in over 20 years though. By comparison my record for corked wine that was sealed with corks was 6 bottles from a single case on a single day!

I also like the glass closures, they look very classy and I think if I made wine that is what I would choose. The rather more funky  Zork closure is rather good too, especially for sparkling wine.  It makes a noise like a cork popping and you can reseal it.

However, many people are more traditional than me and like to cling to things because they are used to them or sometimes because they think they are best and so cork is still used to seal the majority of wine bottles.

In the 10 years from 2006 to 2106 the use of cork has dropped from 78% of closures to 61%, so it is still the dominant material. In that time screw caps have grown from just 5% to 26%. If those figures seem low to you, outside of the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland, cork is considered superior and screwcaps are widely viewed as suitable only for the cheapest wines.

The tops of various types of cork.

Well cork seems to be fighting back and the charge is lead by a new form of cork that manages to get round the traditional problems that cork has.

Natural cork.

Most of you will be able to picture a traditional cork, that is a cylinder of cork stamped out a single piece of cork oak bark. Being a single piece if it is contaminated by TCA, this will infect the wine.

Agglomerate cork.

Agglomerate cork was an attempt to get around that by making the cork out of lots of tiny pieces of cork glued together. However these are usually considered less suitable for ageing wine as there is almost no oxygen ingress, or trickle of oxygen through the cork, to age the wine. In addition they are less pliable than natural cork, so again less suitable for long term ageing.

Synthetic cork.

Synthetic corks have certainly proved to be effective for early drinking wines. The risk of TCA infection is almost completely removed, unless TCA gets into the wine via wood or filter pads or by another route – this can also happen with screw cap wines, but it is rare. However many of them can harden over a relatively short time, making them less effective and allowing air into the wine. Added to which they are really difficult to get off the corkscrew once you have removed them from the bottle. In my opinion these are really only suitable for early drinking wines, but a screw cap would be a better seal and preserve the fresh character of the wine and the fruit much better.

Recently I was invited to France to tour a cork factory that belongs to a company that is changing everything – that company is Diam.

A Diam 3 cork.

Basically Diam manufacture a type of agglomerate cork, but a very high tech and high quality one. I cannot pretend to understand the science, but basically they harvest high quality cork, season it outside for up to 12 months, just as natural cork would be. They then wash it and crush it into granules which are then filtered to remove foreign bodies and the woody parts. This leaves them with pure suberin, which unlike lesser cork is inert. This substance undergoes a similar process to the one that removes caffeine from coffee, which removes all impurities from the cork granules, they actually store the TCA that they remove as it can be used in the manufacture of some skin creams – so the next time auntie smells of cork taint, perhaps she hasn’t been drinking! The gaps between the cork granules are filled with microspheres which increases the elasticity of the finished cork. They are then bound together with a food grade binding agent before being moulded, machined and finished to the correct size and finish.

They tell me that with their process there is no risk of TCA, the cork is pliable enough to ensure there is minimal risk of premature oxidation – which makes Diam corks particularly popular in Burgundy – and stops bottle variation as they perform consistently.

If you look at the Diam cork above, you will see in the bottom right it says Diam 3, they actually make Diam 2, Diam 3, Diam 5, Diam 10 and Diam 30 for still wines, the number tells you how long they guarantee the cork for. They also make sparkling wine corks and spirit stopper corks.

An unused Diam 5.

It was a fascinating visit. The factory floor was almost entirely unmanned, with robotic machines doing all the work. The whole place had a rather wonderful toasty, malty, toffee, caramel sort of smell which is what the corks smell of when still warm.

Our little group on the factory floor and yes that is Charles Metcalfe in the centre. I reached the conclusion that the protective clothing was a French joke as none of the management wore it!

Diam corks are tested for their elasticity as they want them to be as pliable as possible. This elastic property ensures that they give a perfect seal and apparently do not need to be kept damp – so if you know it has a Diam cork you do not need to lie it down, or so Diam say.

Diam Origine.

Diam have been around since 2005 and their share of the market keeps rising, their share of the cork market has risen from a very healthy 4% in 2006 to 10% 10 years later. And by the way that 10% represents 1.3 billion corks a year!

Now they have launched an organic version called Diam Origine. Initially this will just be in a Diam 10 and a Diam 30 version, but more will follow. The organic corks uses beeswax emulsion and a binding agent made from plants and I expect that we will begin to see them used on more and more organic and biodynamic wines.

The Pic du Canigou from Diam’s factory near Collioure in the Roussillon region of France.

It was a very different visit from my normal wine trips, but it was very interesting and informative and the weather was gorgeous, the only lovely weather I have had this year so far. I was very impressed by what I saw and heard and feel much more confident about cork now than I have for a long time, as long as it is Diam.

It’s just a pity that you cannot tell whether the wine is sealed with a Diam cork before you buy it. Perhaps they ought to find a way of letting us know before we part with our money?