A Tuscan House Red Option
And no, it's not Chianti
I studied abroad in Florence in the Spring of 2012. I knew basically no Italian, had a rudimentary understanding of Italian culture and geography, and somehow knew almost nothing about the Medici. But I did know that I liked wine, and I thought that several months in Italy would give me the kind of on-the-ground education that I thought would open up that world for me.
And it kind of did! I went to a lot of local tastings, I traveled out into the hills to taste at vineyards, and I even stayed at one with my family. But so, so much of it was based around Chianti. And that makes sense - it’s what everyone knows, it has the cool black rooster, and Sangiovese is the vast majority of the juice in the region. I learned that I liked, but did not love, typical Chianti expressions.
And so sometimes when we’re making something big and Italian - especially if there’s a lot of tomatoes and garlic - I’ll seek out a Chianti Classico to drink with it. And that’s fun and nostalgic and inoffensive. But I’d largely let Tuscan wine go by the wayside, which is sad since so much of what I know about wine I learned there.
That was, until I dove into Jason Wilson’s excellent piece on other Tuscan wines last August:
I was especially drawn to his description of Cortona, a place I had never been (and, honestly, a direction I never really traveled at all save to go to Rome) and a wine I was wholly unfamiliar with until he decided to write about it:
Over in Cortona (where Frances Mayes lived in her villa), producers are making some incredible wines from syrah. You heard me right: syrah. How the well-known Rhône variety ended up in Cortona is a bit of a mystery. Even the Consorzio Vini Cortona confesses that it’s unsure of the grape’s origins here: “We think the first plants arrived in the nineteenth century, during the French invasion, or, probably, they were brought by the Count of Montecarlo from Lucca in the early twentieth century, while he was coming back home from a journey in France.”
Regardless of syrah’s murky origins, it’s well established in Cortona by now, with syrah accounting for 80 percent of Cortona’s half-million annual bottles. Cortona may be making some of the most exciting syrah outside of the northern Rhône right now.
This will come later, but living in Washington I definitely learned that I liked Syrah. But Tuscan Syrah sounded crazy, and I knew I had to track it down and try it. I’m so glad I did.
Marchesi Antinori La Braccesca Achelo Cortona
You, like me, may recognize the Antinori name. If you’ve tasted in Tuscany at all, you’ve almost certainly tasted Antinori. Any wine brand with an “estates” section of the website is a big-time operation. But that also means that they have incredible distribution, and if they’re willing to make some lesser-known stuff they’re one of the few houses that can get it onto shelves. Which means that their Achelo is widely available, so that’s where I’ve landed given my criteria.
Jason described this as a good “value introduction” with a:
Pretty nose of purple flowers, berries, and herbs, and cool, fresh red fruit on the palate. A bit oaky, but very drinkable.
That makes it right in the middle of mine and Mary’s palates; she likes a good body in her reds while I sometimes prefer a red that, blindfolded, may be able to confuse a novice due to their lightness. A light-ish Syrah is pretty much the smack-dab middle of what we like, and we really liked this wine. It’s great to drink alone, and it pairs well with standard Italian fare.
This checks a lot of boxes for me: available, affordable, familiar-but-interesting, and a fun story overall. Mostly, it makes me want to go back to Tuscany - and if drinking a wine doesn’t make you want to visit the vineyard, what are we even doing here?