Upper Tiber Valley vinosanto from smoked grapes

The production of vinosanto, a sweet wine made from raisined grapes, is traditional in all of Tuscany and Umbria’s wine-producing areas. But in the Upper Tiber Valley, around Città di Castello, over the centuries the local families developed a technique that makes their wine unique. The bunches of grapes (singly or tied together in pairs called coppiole) are dried in rooms filled with smoke from fireplaces or stoves, giving the final wine a distinct smoky note. Historically the bunches would be hung from the kitchen ceiling, allowing the smoke from the hearth to permeate the grapes, but in the 19th century this tradition became intertwined with an activity on the rise at the time: tobacco production.
The wine producers would arrange their grapes in the rooms used for drying the tobacco leaves, exposing them to the fire and smoke produced by large wood-burning stoves. The link between the two products did not end there: When the farmers dug up the tins where they had stored some tobacco to hide it from the government monopoly, they would soften the leaves by sprinkling them with vinosanto. And the tradition of dipping a Tuscan cigar in vinosanto before smoking continues today.
The grapes used are trebbiano, malvasia, grechetto and malfiore, all picked before they become too ripe, so that the grape skins are still thick and resistant. The drying lasts at least three or four months, until December or January. The bunches are then destemmed and pressed and the must left to ferment in wooden barrels with the natural yeasts kept by every family. The barrels are stored in well-ventilated rooms, where they are subject to seasonal variations in temperature. Time does the rest, and after at least five years the end result is a sweet wine with notes of dried fruit and chestnut honey and an unmistakable hint of smoke evoking cigar tobacco.

Season

The product is available all year round