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I-Florence by Dotflorence staff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non opere derivate 2.5 Italia License.
Based on a work at www.i-florence.com
Posts Tagged ‘vino’
Vin Santo – The Holy Wine from Tuscany
Vin Santo is a traditional Tuscan wine that is not only made commercially, but also on farms and in people’s homes. It’s a rich, sweet wine that got its name (Vin Santo means ‘holy wine’) as it used to be used by the priest in Holy Communion.
Halfway between wine and whiskey, this almondy, caramelized sweet wine is some of the most distinctive after-dinner wines found in Italy.
Traditionally, you might also be offered a glass of Vin Santo when you visit someone’s home – hence the nickname the ‘wine of friendship’.
There are wide variations in Vin Santo’s quality – those producers who make good ones tell ominous tales of others cutting their wines with spirits to bring them up to the required alcohol level, adding caramel for color and flavor, and so forth.
Usually getting up to about 16 to 18 percent alcohol and taking on a deep, amber color from the small chestnut or oak casks in which it is aged, Vin Santo is more robust than most other dessert wines made from white grapes.
Although is is produced in other regions of Italy (Trentino Alto-Adige, Umbria), it is a Tuscan signature, the kind of wine most Tuscan vintners make at least a little bit of for special occasions.
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It’s Vino Novello time!
It’s new wine time, or Vino Novello, as we Italians call it.
Vino Novello is the first of the crop; it goes on sale on November 6 and it’s going to be available through February, not later than Easter.
Beaujolais Nouveau, French version of the New Wine, goes on sale the 3rd Tuesday of November and will be available through Easter.
Vino Novello goes from grapes to wine in about 20 days 
and has a unique taste that varies according to the kind of grape and the place where it is grown.
But not all Italian regions are actually outputting this kind of wine: infact, most novello’s producers can be found in Tuscany, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia-Romagna and Sardinia.
Vino Novello has a very short life: it lacks tannins, which are wine’s most important and primary preservatives. With no tannins, any wine will go bad in a short period of time. So, now you know: once the bottle is opened, it must be drunk quickly!
This kind of wine is made from a different process than normal red wines: the difference lies in the fermentation process: grapes are placed in big vats, then are then closed off and the oxygen is eliminated by pumping in CO2.
This technique is known as carbonic maceration, and involves whole grapes to be fermented in a carbon dioxide rich environment prior to crushing.
Vino Novello is ideally drunk with light first courses, white meats or fresh cheeses, but also pizza, salumi and, above all, roasted chestnuts, or caldarroste, as we call them here in Italy.
So, are you ready to raise a glass of Vino Novello, tasting a little sip of the new vintage?
Pair it with a handful of caldarroste, and you’ll get the picture 