Tuscany Part 2:  Bolgheri, the Tuscan Coast and More Super-Tuscans

The Tuscan Coast is a relatively new high-quality Italian wine production area that didn't exist as such 35 years ago.  Many highly collectible red wines are made there today, and names like Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Tua Rita have become famous the world over.  However, most wine lovers probably don’t realize that as recently as the early 1980s, only two such wines were produced, Sassicaia and Grattamacco.  In fact, most people assume that Ornellaia followed immediately in the footsteps of Sassicaia, but that’s not so.  Fifteen years separated the birth of those two wines—and much more if one considers that Sassicaia’s ancestor, a wine made for the Incisa della Rocchetta family’s private consumption, was already being bottled in the 1940s.

But the Tuscan Coast has been totally transformed in recent times, and today many noteworthy white wines and sweet wines are also being made by a host of quality estates that have sprung up over the last decade.

The Tuscan Coast, also known as the Maremma, is a large patch of land that comprises the portion of Tuscany that hugs the Tyrrhenian Sea as well as the beautiful islands of Elba, Giglio, Capraia and Gorgona.  On the mainland, the viticultural and wine production area identified as “Tuscan Coast” runs roughly from just north of Livorno (Leghorn) down to south of Grosseto (which is about an hour’s drive by car due north from Rome).  

In fact, the Tuscan Coast may be divided into a northern part (where the town of Bolgheri is located) known as Maremma Livornese or Alta Maremma (“high Maremma”) and a southern part that is better known as Maremma Grossetana.  Although historically many in Italy refer to this southern portion of the Tuscan Coast as the Maremma proper, in fact the whole of the Maremma runs from Lazio, just north of Rome, right into Liguria, well above the northern boundary of Tuscany.  The Tuscan Coast moniker is also applied to wines made in the Tuscan inland areas of Lucca and Pisa, not far removed from the coastline, whose wines greatly resemble, in both grape varieties and styles, those of the Tuscan coastal areas.