Wine: In search of Italy’s Super Tuscans

Published 10:54 pm Saturday, September 22, 2007

Standing next to me in the wine section of the town grocery, known as the Cooperativa, in the ancient village of Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany, was a very large man wearing a Green Bay Packers jersey.

We were both staring at bottles of wine with lots of Italian written on them.

“Do you know which ones are Super Tuscans?” he asked, figuring I was another confused Americano.

Not having a clue of what he was searching for, I blurted back in Italian, “Non so dei Super Toscani! (I don’t know about Super Tuscans!)”

Grabbing a bottle of Chianti, he quickly ran off, giving me a look like I was a crazed local who wanted to chase away all the tourists.

Indeed, I had not heard of Super Tuscans. It was my second visit to Tuscany. I was becoming an expert on Chianti Classico, spending all of my lira (now euros) on wine and cheese. There were no Super Tuscans listed in my Michelin Guide and my Italian wasn’t good enough to ask a local about them. I was determined, however, to find the Super Tuscans.

The next day I persuaded my wife and two children to take a tour of wineries on the Chianti Road (Via Chiantigiana), a beautiful drive through the hills and valleys in the region of Tuscany between Florence and Siena.

It is marked by signs with a black rooster on them, the symbol of Chianti Classico wine.

Today, I told them, I was searching for the Super Tuscans. They gave me that “Dad is on a goofball mission again” look.

After three winery stops and several samples of sangiovese, I turned into the Rocca della Macie Vineyards, south of Casetellina, and headed for the tasting room.

Inside this classic Tuscan stone building was a beautiful wine bar and a sign that indicated we were just in time for the afternoon talk about their wines.

From the back of the tasting room came a very beautiful young woman, tall with olive skin, but blond and blue eyed — a cross between Scarlett Johansson and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

My heart stopped and my mind raced. She was about to tell us in English all about their award-winning wines.

Could this Italian beauty be a Super Tuscan?

I sheepishly asked her about ­Super Tuscans.

She smiled back and told us that Super Tuscans were outstanding wines, molto buono, and considered to be the best red wines in Tuscany.

The first Super Tuscans were created several decades ago by “rebels,” frustrated winemakers who were tired of being told by the Italian government that they had to blend a certain amount of white grapes, such as malvasia and trebbiano, in their sangiovese-based chianti wine to soften the sharp tannins in the wine.

They experimented with non-Italian grapes, such as merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah, making new wines that sometimes were blended with sangiovese grapes, and sometimes not.

These vintners put their wine in small French barrels (barriques), not the huge casks in which chianti is made.

For their rebellion against the rules of winemaking, the government labeled these wines vino da tavola (table wine), the lowliest rank a wine can get in Italy.

But people loved these daring, delicious wines. Prices for them went through the roof.

These were superior wines made by nonconformists and nicknamed Super Tuscans by the Italian press. The rebel winemakers became legends.

By 1994, the government reluctantly recognized these great wines and gave the producers of Super Tuscans their own category for these wines — IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica).

The standard for Super Tuscan wines was set by the Antinori family in the 1970s with the creation of two outstanding wines, sassicaia, an all-cabernet sauvignon wine, and solaia, a blend of cabernet and sangiovese.

These wines are the polar opposites of the simple chianti wine in the straw-wrapped bottles we drank back then. It was world-class red wine.

Sassicaia, which means “place of stones” in Italian, comes from vines planted in Bolgheri, a hot and remote part of Tuscany on the Mediterranean, full of woods and marshes.

Sassicaia became the first Super Tuscan and is a bold, powerful cabernet. Super Tuscans are known as intense wines with fruit flavors that explode in your mouth.

Because the definition of chianti has changed, most Super Tuscans today qualify to be called “chianti.” However, their producers have held onto the Super Tuscan marketing theme because they developed such a tremendous superstar reputation. Now almost every great Tuscan winery wants to make one and be recognized as a vintner of Super Tuscans.

You won’t see the name Super Tuscan on the wine label; it’s not an official government designation. And these wines are terribly expensive.

I did find a Super Tuscan on that trip to Italy. It was dark, heavy and delicious. I paid 100,000 lira for one bottle — about $60 when the exchange rate was good. That would be a deal today for these amazing exotic red wines.

There are great Super Tuscan-style wines being made in America today by Italian-American vintners, such as Robert Mondavi, who has created a special winery, La Famiglia, for that purpose.

In Washington state, Chateau St. Michelle Winery has teamed up with the Antinori family of Tuscany to produce a great red wine, Col Solare.

These wines are getting a lot of attention and are priced better than their Tuscan counterparts.

Michael “Gino” Gianunzio is a local lawyer, winemaker and artist who lives on Camano Island. He can be reached at theislanditalian@yahoo.com.