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Siena and Beyond: Introduction

Siena is a wonderful location, a Tuscan hilltop town dripping with atmosphere, history and an exciting culture. It is most famous for Il Palio, the biannual horse race around the town square, Il Campo, in which ten of the seventeen contrade (town districts) compete. This race is part of a great celebration of Medieval history and pageantry that exists in Siena, and nightly celebrations of the recent win were still ongoing when I visited the town in September last year. The victorious Contrada della Torre had not won the race since 1961, 44 years before my visit, and they were ensuring all were aware of their victory with 44 nights of marching, with some in Medieval regalia, two or three bearing their unique banners aloft, somewhere in the region of seventy enthusiastic drummers, and over a hundred trailing behind, all in fine voice.

As well as immersing myself in Siennese life itself, and exploring the town to its very limits via the many narrow, arched side streets like the one to the left, naturally I also looked north to the vineyards of Chianti. Siena is a wonderful base for exploring the southern Chianti estates, with Felsina, Rocca di Montegrossi and Castello di Brolio just a stone's throw to the north. By car it is possible to explore huge swathes of the region, but I found exploring by bicycle to be preferable. For a reasonable fee a local hire firm will collect you from your hotel, deposit you and hired transport in the countryside at your chosen location, and then collect you at the end of the day. Such a method is fine for visiting estates such as Felsina and Fonterutoli, but it is hard work reaching Fontodi, which is further north near Panzano. These three are my favourite names for Chianti, as they have proven themselves over many years with a consistent track record, and in the most recent vintages have proven true to form by turning out some stunning wines. I'm happy to be able to update my profiles of each with more information and new tasting notes, including an exhaustive look at the wines of Fontodi, and a wonderful vertical tasting of Castello di Fonterutoli Chianti Classico.

But back to Siena for a moment. There is much to discover here, for those that have the temperament to explore a little, and as you might imagine much of the region's wine culture is expressed within the town walls themselves. Amble up any of the streets that wind their way between and around Il Campo and Il Duomo, the town's cathedral, and you will pass many stores, obviously there to pick up the tourist trade, selling local produce, including many great Chiantis, as well as local meats, with wild boar an obvious specialty, cheeses, pasta and oils. Over towards the Basilica di San Domenico, resting place for the head and finger of Saint Catherine of Siena (the rest is in Rome, naturally), in the grounds of the Fortezza di Santa Barbara, you can find Enoteca Italiana, a national archive of Italian wine, where there are always a few bottles open and ready for tasting. For a non-viticultural moment, I enjoyed the frescos, such as this one above, painted by Domenico di Bartolo, in Siena's ancient Santa Maria della Scala hospital. This is not, however, as irrelevant to matters vinous as you might think. Wine, and other alcohols, will have played an important role in the treatment of maladies throughout the hospital's one thousand years of history, and at least one of the forthcoming Chianti profiles features an estate that was once home to an order of Benedictine monks, who worked under the direction of those at Santa Maria della Scala.

Italy isn't just Siena, Tuscany and Chianti, though, a fact I acknowledged a few years ago on The Winedoctor when I featured the classic styles of Tuscany, Piedmont and Veneto in a year of tastings, rather like my feature on the red wines of the Loire. A few months after my return from Siena, at a tasting in London, not only did I top up my Chianti experience with the wines of Badia a Coltibuono, I looked further afield to take in some of Italy's other classic styles. Thus from Veneto, we have Prosecco from top estate Bisol, and an update to my Tedeschi profile, with new notes for the latest vintages. And from Piedmont, a little freshening up to my Barolo information, with brand new profiles of two of the region's leading estates, Vietti and Elvio Cogni, together with new notes for the wines of Aldo Conterno. I've combined all these notes and tastings from Italy's classic regions in this series of profiles, both new and updated, and I will try my best to bash these out over the next few weeks. (22/2/06)

Siena and Beyond: a trip to Siena leads to some new Italian profiles: