Wojciech Bońkowski
Master of Wine

Vernaccia: patient progress

After years of patient progress, Vernaccia di San Gimignano is now one of Italy’s best white wines.

Apple and salt

Tasting the new 2011 vintage of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, I feel refreshed, interested, and happy.

Vernaccia: white Tuscany

I traditionally spend the third week of February in Tuscany, invited alongside other writers and wine buyers by the consorzios for Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Brunello di Montalcino who make the new vintages available for tasting.

Vernaccia tasting at the modern art gallery in San Gimignano.

It’s an intense time of hectic tasting, crisp acidity and crunchy tannins. Sangiovese is a fantasting grape but it’s easy to overdose. So it’s really delightful that this year I’ve started the Tuscan immersion by the preview tasting of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Tuscany’s premier white wine.

Vernaccia has the laudable habit of spicing up its Anteprima with a comparative tasting with a famous French wine appellation. Past editions have featured Chablis, Sancerre and Hermitage, and this year it was Pouilly-Fuissé. Such comparisons have a limited direct relevance but they’re a good occasion to taste some proper French wines (something I must do more often) and look at Vernaccia in a broader context.

The Vernaccia consorzio president Letizia Cesani with Philippe Valette
and Fabio Montrasi (of Château des Rontets).
It was actually a brave move on Vernaccia’s side, as the comparison surely showcased some of the appellation’s inherent problems. The major one, for me, was a lack of stylistic homogeneity and a clear direction. It’s especially evident in the Riserva bottlings. New oak, used oak, large oak; oak fermentation, stainless steel fermentation, skin contact, lees contact; ageing in oak, in concrete, in bottle: I’ve tasted over 25 Riservas without quite understanding where they should be going. The best examples, such as Giovanni Panizzi’s 2002 and 2006 (see also my earlier article here), or La Lastra’s 2002 and 2001, or Mattia Barzaghi’s Cassandra 2007, are wine of compelling substance and potential, but many others are just coarse and excessive with no sense of harmony.
In the end it was a more consistent showing for the basic Vernaccias (and the odd single vineyard selection), many of which provide a happy reflection of San Gimignano’s sandy-clay terroir: unaromatic and sometimes low on fruit but with vivid salty, bitterish mineral notes on the palate, Vernaccia is one of Italy’s most distinctive white flavours. Highlights included Vincenzo Cesani, La Mormoraia, Mattia Barzaghi, and Cappella di Sant’Andrea, athough it should also be said there was a large amount of bland industrial-tasting wine that does nothing to enhance Vernaccia’s reputation.

The wine was better preserved than the label.

The Pouilly-Fuissé team was restricted to three estates, but they provided some very exciting drinking. I found Guffens-Heynen’s wines built around oak, but they’re real masterpieces of oak vinification and the Mâcon-Pierreclos 1er Jus de Chavigne 2006 is one heck of a vibrant, structured, mineral Chardonnay, and the Pouilly-Fuissé Deuxième Tri 1993 was impressively preserved for its age.

Yet in a way the more stimulating wines came from Domaine Valette, including a bold no-sulphur (there’s only 8mg added at bottling) Viré-Clessé 2006 and 2003 that was slow to open but revealed an intriguing herby-medicinal minerality and a wide panorama of salty notes; it’s really thoroughly recommended for 16€. And Château des Rontets offered three very solid bottling of Pouilly-Fuissé: the Les Birbettes, from 80-year-old vines, is extractive, deep, majestic and impressive. We were surely looking at the elite of Pouilly-Fuissé but they surely showed a level of consistency, concentration and depth that is beyond the reach of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, for the moment. Reasons? I’d identify a long consolidated tradition of wine production in Burgundy, but also a stronger emphasis on vineyard management, and importantly, yields: yields are always relative and should be taken with a grain of salt but a Vernaccia producer is happy to produce 50-60hl/ha with a planting density of 4–5000 vines/ha while the Burgundian standard at 10K vines/ha is closer to 30–40hl. That’s three times less than in Tuscany. 

This trip to Tuscany
(flights, hotels, meals and transfers) was paid for by the consorzios of
Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Chianti Classico, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and
Brunello di Montalcino.

The wines of Giovanni Panizzi


Another box of samples. 9 bottles from the stellar estate of
Giovanni Panizzi in San Gimignano, Tuscany. I’ve followed Panizzi’s progress since my first trips to Tuscany in 1999, and today place him at the very top of this interesting appellation.
The local speciality here is the white Vernaccia grape, made into a dry wine that’s classified as DOCG Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Vernaccia shares some characteristics with Orvieto (see here for a recent post): a structured white wine with good minerality and ageing potential, it has a bit more acidity and substance than Orvieto while usually avoiding the latter’s 14% alc. Vernaccia, especially when aged, can resemble a good Chablis, to the astonishment of the unprepared.
This series of recent releases showed Panizzi in excellent shape. The Vernaccia di San Gimignano 2007 is a model of its appellation with vibrant citrus over sea salt and limestone; a more mouth-watering and stomach-waking white I cannot imagine. The shortly oak-aged Vernaccia Vigna Santa Margherita 2008 is head and shoulders above past editions of this label (which I’d found a little clumsy): oak adding a half-layer of peach richness without obliterating the tense salinity of the straight Vernaccia. The Vernaccia Riserva 2003 is a very serious bottle indeed, though I discourage you from opening it too soon: wait for the Chablisian echoes of Jurassic oysters and clams to unravel in a decade’s time, when the honeyed-toasted bready barrique melts away. Good drinking pleasure but mixed thoughts about Il Bianco di Gianni 2004, a somewhat predictable Vernaccia-Chardonnay-oak blend that lacks originality and shows how substantially Panizzi’s handling of oak has improved in four years: where the Santa Margherita was allusive this is a bit too sewn-wood-drying.

Most interesting among the whites, in a way, was the Vernaccia Evoè 2006. Made in a historical style with a long two-month maceration of skins in oper wooden vat, this wine follows the modern ‘fashion’ of macerated whites without going over the top. The typical bouquet shows notes of ground pepper, apple skins, citrus with really good minerality (not an easy thing to obtain in this style), while the palate is broad, rich, bold, nicely fruity too (stone fruits), although the balance is a little controversial: acidity is low (again, a common characteristic of skin-contact whites) and there is what I identify as residual sugar. Alcohol is moderate (13.5%). A very engaging and not too expensive (16€) bottle that confirms Panizzi’s position at the forefront of Vernaccia today.

Panizzi also belongs to the premier producers of red wine in this predominantly white-wine district. In the past San Gimignano has limited itself to quaffable Sangiovese da tavola and made no claims to steal the show to its neighbour, Chianti (Colli Senesi in this case). In 2006 red wine pressure was acknowledged through the establishment of the DOC San Gimignano Rosso, even though many wines remain classified as IGT (as e.g. the very delicious Campore from the Casale Falchini estate). Panizzi has both: the Vertunno 2005 is a Sangiovese-driven DOC that’s full of rustic Tuscan charm, crying for a wild boar pappardelle. Rubente 2005 is a neat IGT Cabernet Sauvignon with very modern winemaking, exuding confidence in the cellar if in the end not different from all those warm-climate Cabernets around. The top red Folgóre 2003 mixes the two in a way: Cabernet and Merlot add lead-pencilly tannins and plushness while Sangiovese lends (some) freshness and Tuscan character; add lavish oak and five years of age and you get a kind of Pauillac-ised Brunello. Although it’s from a hot vintage that was notoriously difficult to balance in Tuscany, this bottle can easily age another 5 years. The style of the reds is modern and rich and while they lack the intellectual interest of the whites here, it’s really very solid winemaking.
For the pink-inclined there is also the well-made and serious Ceraso Rosa 2008.