2025 Tours For an overview of 2025 dates, click here Idyllically located in unspoilt countryside between Siena – ‘the best-preserved, 
The Via Francigena, or ‘Frankish Road’, was the main road from Rome via the Great St Bernard Pass to territories 
A wine best forgotten
Prior to setting up ATG Oxford and establishing the company’s inaugural walking tours in Italy, Managing Director Christopher Whinney spent several years living in Gaiole, Tuscany, producing Chianti Classico wine – made from the Sangiovese grape. This was at a time when the now-famous wine areas of Chianti and Southern Tuscany, with its sublime Brunello di Montalcino wines, were relatively unknown.
Christopher fondly remembers a conversation about the ideal amount of time to wait before arriving at the perfect glass…
The gesticulations said it all. The grower, a small barrel of a man with white hair and rough, callused hands; and the sommelier – groomed, manicured and handsome, stood looking across vineyards of immaculately tended Sangiovese grapes, engrossed in animated conversation.
‘Troppo violente’ the sommelier winced. ‘I never decant a Brunello’.
‘So your customers have to wait for the wine to open whilst their dinner gets cold?’
‘Decanting allows the wine to oxygenate, but too suddenly, and you miss the sensation of it actually opening in the glass’.
‘So they wait… How long are they going to wait?’
‘With great wines you must have patience. Respect’.
‘But the wine has been waiting 20 years in the bottle and people drink it before it has time to breathe – they lose all respect for the wine.’
‘Of course’.
‘So how long before you drink it do you open a Brunello?’
‘Well two hours, maybe a little longer.’
‘So when people come to your restaurant and order a bottle at the table, do you serve it?’
‘Of course. I keep some bottles at room temperature. The wine will open in the glass.’
‘Not ideal.’
‘No, not ideal.’
‘But you get to sell an expensive bottle of wine’.
‘An expensive bottle of your wine’.
The argument would go on for hours….
High in the hills of southern Tuscany, around the walked medieval town of Montalcino, a localised clone of the Sangiovese grape, Brunello, produces Italy’s most expensive red wine. Properly aged and served ‘there is the unmistakable sense of being in the presence of greatness.’ Five years in oak barrels before the first bottles are sold, it needs another ten years or more before the tannins soften and the wine matures. Twenty years would be better. Only then will you discover why this wine is so revered.
Brunello is a wine best forgotten. Recently, when clearing junk from a storeroom, I found beneath the debris some bottles that had been there for 15 years… buried treasure, indeed!
The magnificent Brunello wine was created by Ferruccio Biondi-Santi in the 1880s as a result of managing to isolate and propagate the Brunello clone of the Sangiovese Grosso vine at his vineyard Il Greppo. In 1888 and 1891 he made wines of such quality that they are still admired today. Today his descendants continue the tradition of thinning out the grapes in August to allow the choicest grapes the full benefits of September and early October sun before the harvest around 12 October. The wine is aged in Slavonian oak barrels for 5 years (riservas 6 years). Brunello has a strong alcohol content (about 13-13.5%) and is delicious accompanying meat and strong cheese.
There are about 80 vineyards around Montalcino but many of these are tiny, producing as few as 2000 bottles a year. The following vineyards are the labels to look for: Biondi-Santi (but one is paying a premium for the name), Barbi, Poggione, Cerbonaia, Caparzo, Lisini, Altesino, Paradiso. The best riservas, it is claimed, take 25 years to achieve perfection. Rosso di Montalcino is simply Sangiovese that has not been through the oak ageing but is nevertheless pleasant.
This area of Italy is one of my very favourites, not just for its outstanding wines, but for its wonderful walking, flowers and butterflies, superb art and architecture and magical medieval towns. Come and discover it for yourself on one of our classic walking tours in southern Tuscany….
Several ATG hiking and cycling tours pass through this area of Tuscany now world-renowned for its wines, medieval hill-top towns (Siena, Montalcino, Pienza, Montepulciano), rolling hills with endless views and wonderful Tuscan cuisine (to accompany the wines!).
Southern Tuscan Trail (Escorted walking)
Southern Tuscany (Independent walking or cycling)
For an overview of all our tours, click here