June 5th, 2024
The wine queen of Tuscany, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, may have had its vintage of the century in 2023, but you’d never know it by talking to the winemakers who made it.
The vintage in central Tuscany was cool and very rainy. Yields were way down. Winemaker Gregorio Camarotti of Il Palagione said he lost 70 percent of his usual harvest.
“Probably the vine works better on the remaining grapes,” Gregorio Camarotti said.
I’m here to tell you that’s true, and that the next year or so is an outstanding time to buy this affordable white wine that – even in its own region – is a bit of an afterthought. Organizers of the consortium in San Gimignano call Vernaccia the “queen” because Sangiovese is the king of all Tuscany, and other red grapes like Cabernet and Merlot are the royal court. The white queen is often shunted aside.
“Tuscany is famous for reds,” said Tollena proprietor Barbara Bernardi. “Here, we have a lot of people who stay on the property. It’s not so difficult to sell also the white wine. But, red first. And Vernaccia is a difficult wine to sell because Vermentino is so much easier.” Ouch.
I spent some time in wine shops in the beautiful walled medieval hill town of San Gimignano, and every tourist I overheard came seeking red wines; the vineyards surrounding the town are inside both the Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOC and the Chianti Colli Senesi DOC.
Vernaccia has an interesting history. The grape was first mentioned in 1276 in a tax document. In 1966, Vernaccia di San Gimignano was awarded the first DOC of any kind in Italy. We can debate how great it is, but its place in history is indisputable.
Here’s a peek behind the curtain of wine journalism, to tell you how I know this rare grape so well. For many years, the major wine regions of Tuscany have collaborated to host a press tasting event called Anteprime Toscana. I have attended for years, including this year, when I wrote about great values in Chianti Classico.
Almost all Tuscan wine is red. In past years, the Anteprime stopped for one day in San Gimignano. We bussed down from Florence, had dinner, and the next morning tasted all the current release Vernaccias before getting on a bus to taste more red wine in Montepulciano. But few of us ever wrote about Vernaccia.
In May, I was in a smaller group of journalists invited to San Gimignano. It has left the Anteprime, probably because none of us were writing about Vernaccia. Now, instead of a single day in the delightful town – a magnet for tourists with its well-preserved towers and medieval-era murals – I would get four. Frankly, I was skeptical that Vernaccia was worth it. But it turns out the Consorzio’s timing was incredible.
In the tasting room, from about the halfway point, we started saying it out loud. Not just me; also my colleagues/friends from England and Norway and Italy, who have also tasted these wines for years. These are the best Vernaccias we’ve ever had. What have they done differently? Where were these Vernaccias all my life?
First of all, while the wines have plenty of freshness, the mouthfeel of the ’23s is rounded in a way that new releases often are not. Many of the wines have an appealing note of violet in the aroma; they smell pretty, which will help them compete with the interloper, Vermentino.
A big change for the riservas is that they have cut back on new oak. I’m not a xylophobe: I like oak on some white wines, especially Chardonnay. But oak never seems to help Vernaccia.
After tasting the superb 2023 Vernaccias, I looked forward to visiting wineries to talk about it. Thus I learned that most wineries do NOT consider it the vintage of the century. Losing 70 percent of your crop will do that, but if you know Italy, you know that people tend to be parochial: they drink their region’s wines and eat their region’s food, and that’s it. They know the 2023 Vernaccias are different. I don’t think they have a good sense of how well these 2023 Vernaccias compete on the world stage.
A special vintage
Valentino Ciarla is a consulting winemaker for both Tollena and Il Palagione.
“Vernaccia is a wine I discovered only working here,” Ciarla said. “Because for me, it was a simple white wine, nothing more. But I discovered it can give you something after years. The old vineyards are only in the best places; that’s important. This is the wine of our grandparents. We should make the wine easier to drink.”
I told Ciarla that the 2023 vintage of Vernaccia was the best I’ve ever tasted.
“When you talk about people working in the vintage, we have in memory all the difficulty,” Ciarla said. “We had too much rain in May and June. We couldn’t get in the vineyard. It was much harder than usual. The last two weeks of July were very hot, but it was a short period.”
But the vines were likely happier than the vignerons, because 2023 broke a serious multi-year drought.
“In Tuscany at the end of 2022, we were afraid we wouldn’t have water for the toilet. It was so dry,” Ciarla said. “So when it started raining in ’23, we were happy. But there was no button to stop.”
Camotti said that the region’s clay soils retained much of that water so that, for the first time in years – because irrigation is not allowed – the vines had water at the end of the season.
“I think that’s why the wines were so aromatic,” Camotti said.
International critics agree on this one. We think you should seek out 2023 Vernaccia di San Gimignano. It won’t be easy.
“There are only 5 million bottles of Vernaccia for the whole world, and half are sold in San Gimignano,” Gregorio’s father Giorgio Camotti said.
If you can find them, here were my favorites from the Class of ’23. I will forgo individual tasting notes because the good ones have a mainly citrus character with some top notes of violet.
Cesani Vernaccia di San Gimignano
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