Tuscany’s Mysterious Self-Making Vin Santo

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut when I first tasted Vin Santo. On a sunlit June evening I sat alone at some trattoria lining the Piazza Grande in Arezzo, where I was studying that summer. With a chapter or two left of Slaughterhouse-Five, I figured I’d indulge in something sweet. I knew nothing about wine at the time, but after glancing at the menu I fancied “Vin Santo e Cantucci,” some sort of Tuscan blue-plate special, dessert plus an extra glass on the house. To my surprise, the waiter brought me no new stemware. Instead, he served a small bowl of wine encircled by biscotti-like almond cookies. The wine was less than spectacular – I recognized that even then – but the experience was profoundly gratifying, like an adult version of milk and Oreos. I watched the bowl of Vin Santo grow cloudy with each cookie I dipped. And when I ran out of cantucci, I slurped down the remaining Vin Santo with little wine-soaked crumbs revealing themselves in the final drops. 

As I read of Billy Pilgrim being thrust through time and space to the planet of Tralfamadore, with my bowl of Vin Santo I too sensed that I had entered another dimension—the old Italy we Americans romanticize so dearly. There’s a tradition in Tuscany of greeting guests with a “Vin Santino,” a small glass of the local dessert wine “Vin Santo,” when they arrive at your home. Tuscans call it the “benvenuto” or “welcome” wine, a pouring of which serves as an invitation into the famiglia. I returned to Tuscany this past October to accept that offer.

Up until recently Vin Santo was a rather modest beverage, kept by its producers to share among their friends, rarely ever seeking a place on commercial shelves. Today, Tuscany opens its doors to the rest of the world to taste its treasured sweet wine. However, Vin Santo can be bewildering to both the modern winemaker and consumer. Paolo de Marchi of Isole e Olena admits production of Vin Santo remains in “the stone age of winemaking.” Indeed, documentation of the “passito” method in which Vin Santo is created can be traced back to 800 BC. In 2016, however, we live in an era where gyropalettes render the lightning-speed hands of Champagne’s riddlers obsolete, and mechanical lagares in Porto replace lines of human stompers, crushing grapes in rhythmic unison with their bare 'feet' through the night. Vin Santo undergoes no such processing. It’s a humbling experience to be in the presence of a wine that leaves its producer no option but to essentially let it make itself.

Malvasia and Trebbiano Toscano, fresh from the vine, dry on bamboo mats at Isole e Olena

A wine as ancient as Vin Santo of course comes with some debate as to the origins of its name. “Vin Santo” translates to “holy wine,” and historically the beverage has long been appropriated for sacramental purposes during the Catholic Mass. In fact, many of Tuscany’s greatest wineries for Vin Santo are housed in thousand year-old former monasteries. Another popularly held belief is the name “Vin Santo” derives from its Greek cousin “Vinsanto,” which may be a portmanteau of “vino Santorini.” The island produces a similarly styled sweet wine from the indigenous grape Assyrtiko.

In many respects, the history of Vin Santo mirrors that of the Tuscan wine industry at large. For much of its existence, Vin Santo was a wine produced by sharecroppers. Tenant farmers could easily vinify small lots of Vin Santo above ground in the old homes that dot each estate’s landscape. It wasn’t until the Nineties that the Italian government recognized Vin Santo with its own appellations. Over a dozen DOCs for Vin Santo exist within Tuscany, but the most important are Vin Santo del Chianti, Vin Santo del Chianti Classico and Vin Santo di Montepulciano, established in 1997, 1995 and 1996, respectively.

Two thousand six brought perhaps the most critical turning point for modern Vin Santo. According to records provided by the Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico, the region’s proprietors declared nearly double the production of Vin Santo in 2006 from the previous year. Not coincidentally, 2006 was the first vintage in which white grapes were eliminated from the grapes authorized for the production of Chianti Classico. While some producers uprooted their vineyard plots of Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in favor of Sangiovese, others repurposed the white grapes for their Vin Santo programs. Ultimately, the change in legislation proved directly beneficial to Chianti Classico’s prized reds, as well as tangentially advantageous to its dessert wines.

The broader question is if this Vin Santo explosion can find a market to support the increased production. I caught up with Brian Larky, founder of Dalla Terra, who imports both Badia a Coltibuono and Selvapiana’s Vin Santos to the United States (he also brings in Poliziano’s Vino Nobiles and hopes to add their Vin Santo to his portfolio in the future should quantities permit). He said frankly, “In terms of Vin Santo, it’s true that there’s a lot more fruit that’s available. It doesn’t matter how much supply you have. Has the demand for Vin Santo grown or changed? And the answer is no.” Larky, though, does move well over a thousand cases of Vin Santo half bottles each vintage. Other importers, however, may only be inclined to purchase Vin Santo at a discount from their clients, the wine flowing to distributors and retailers at this slashed rate. Larky also explains that a good portion goes to restaurants, where he believes by-the-glass programs are essential to selling the Vin Santo. Gianpaolo Paterlini does just that at Acquerello, the two-Michelin star restaurant, which, to my good fortune, stands less than three blocks from my San Francisco apartment. “We sell Vin Santo every night. It’s our best selling sweet wine for sure,” Paterlini tells me. He always has four to six Vin Santos open to offer by-the-glass, as well as over a dozen bottle selections available dating back to the Eighties. While Larky and Paterlini have both been able to find success with the wines, time will reveal whether or not Vin Santo’s growth as a category will be economically sustainable.

Vin Santo can be a rather unruly wine. With the recipe unchanged for centuries, many winemakers have come to believe Vin Santo production “oenology free.” They’ll take on a laissez-faire mentality, sealing their barrels with wax, never checking up on their wines and hoping for the best once it comes time to bottle. Truthfully, they’re not all that far off—Vin Santo operates with a mind of its own. But, each winemaker is tasked with a series of decisions that will help guide the product into becoming a fine wine of the modern era.

Not surprisingly, the first important question is what grapes to use. The most common choices are Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia, both formerly included in the Chianti blend. Trebbiano Toscano, or simply Trebbiano (the same as France’s omnipresent Ugni Blanc, the chief grape behind Cognac and Armagnac), supplies acidity and helps focus the wine. Malvasia is better known for its contribution to Madeira, where it’s called Malmsey. Quite the opposite of Trebbiano, Malvasia sits broad and languid on the palate. The two grapes complement each other well, but most producers seem to favor one or the other. Many estates will also add a splash of Sangiovese into the mix, painting the resulting Vin Santo a shade darker in herbaceous, earthen flavor. A rare breed of Vin Santo called “Occhio di Pernice,” or “eye of the partridge,” derives from at least fifty-percent Sangiovese, depending on the appellation. Virginie Saverys of Avignonesi, one of the most acclaimed producers of the delicacy, said after much effort she could only find fourteen Tuscan estates bottling Occhio di Pernice. Beyond Trebbiano, Malvasia and Sangiovese, winemakers will experiment with everything from Garganega to Petit Manseng in their Vin Santo blends.

Sangiovese destined to be made into the rare “Occhio di Pernice” at Avignonesi

Next, the winemaker must decide how and for how long to dry the grapes. Upon harvest, clusters are brought to the “appassitoio,” an open-windowed attic room where the grapes are left to desiccate for the subsequent months. Each winemaker has his or her own preferred method of dehydration. Some will hang the grapes from chains, often thought superior as this allows three hundred sixty-degree exposure for each cluster to wind. Others find hanging too risky, as stems can easily break, especially as they dry out themselves, which may lead to many bunches falling on the floor. These winemakers typically opt to rest the grapes on plastic crates or bamboo shelves instead. With the passito process much determined by the whims of Mother Nature, certain winemakers will try to speed things up themselves. Many will place a fan in the appassitoio to mimic constant wind. Some will even dust the grapes with bentonite to absorb water and sulfite to repel mosquitoes. The sight is oddly magnificent, each grape cluster looking as if it were blanketed in snow. Regardless of how the winemaker dries the grapes, the most crucial decision is when to press them. Most will wait until around Christmas, but those winemakers seeking to maximize sugar concentration may hold off until late February or even early March.

Lastly, the winemaker has to choose in what material to ferment and age the Vin Santo and for what length of time. Traditionally, Vin Santo lives in fifty liter barrels called “caratelli.” These small barrels are predominately made with chestnut wood, although also prevalent are acacia, cherry, juniper or caratelli constructed with planks of each. A good number of these barrels are many decades, if not over a century old. Winemakers today seem to show the most disdain for juniper caratelli, as they find the wood imparts an unpleasant astringency to the wine. In all cases, French and Slavonian oak appear to be the most popular replacements with today’s Vin Santo producers as the old caratelli begin to disintegrate. Fermentation and aging occur in the “vinsantaia,” another designated room on the second floor of one of these old buildings. For smaller Vin Santo programs, the vinsantaia and appassitoio are often one in the same.