Central Italy’s Best-Kept Secrets

BY ERIC GUIDO | JUNE 25, 2020

More often than not, a consumer or lover of wine will think of something Tuscan when they associate a style or profile with what they like about Italian wine. For collectors, our thoughts often turn to Piedmont and Barolo, but that’s more of a modern trend than most people realize. Once you look past Nebbiolo-based wines and their rise in popularity, you’re left with Tuscany, with its Super Tuscans and Brunello di Montalcino. While many of the original Super Tuscans that brought the collector market to Italy were not based on Sangiovese, today that has changed as well, and of course, Montalcino has always relied on its most prized variety, Sangiovese Grosso. 

However, the broader population of consumers and wine lovers who grew up on Tuscan Sangiovese did so with some form of Chianti. In fact, most Barolo drinkers I know will quickly offer up that their second love after Nebbiolo is Sangiovese, and there’s a good reason for that. The majority of us cut our wine teeth on Chianti, going back decades to the pizza parlors that poured them from straw-wrapped fiaschi, along with the many nostalgic memories we have of those same fiaschi being refashioned into candle holders and vases. If you found yourself cruising the aisles of a wine or liquor store in the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s, looking for an easy-drinking Italian red, would it really have been anything other than a Tuscan Sangiovese?

Chiara Condello's Romagna Predappio vineyards in the foothills of the Apennines.

The problem is that those same wines that imprinted themselves on us for all of those years have, as they’ve gotten better, also gotten more expensive and harder to track down. Don’t get me wrong; there’s still plenty of $10–$15 Chianti on the market, but the best of the best, the pioneering producers and the wines that speak of place before speaking of large production and winemaking, are much harder to obtain.  

However, there is an answer, and one that too few of us have explored. 

Chianti, Brunello and Vino Nobile are just the tip of the Sangiovese iceberg, not only in Tuscany, but also in Italy. In fact, many will argue to this day that Sangiovese originated in Romagna before Tuscany. What’s more, the regions of Le Marche and Umbria, though separated by a spine of mountains from the Tuscan countryside, have for centuries taken very seriously the production of Sangiovese, both pure and blended with other varieties. Granted, these regions may have lagged behind the quality surge that Tuscany witnessed through the last 30 years, but that has changed quite a bit in the last decade. Today, location matters, farming practices continue to improve, cellars are cleaner, and the overuse of new oak is on the decline. What’s the result? In my opinion, it’s a whole new Italian Renaissance, but this time for Sangiovese and what I’ve come to know as the Sangiovese Belt.