Tuscan Wine at Tenutte Niccoli

Today I was able to visit the winery owned by the agroturismo where I am stayinSangioveseg in Tuscany. The wine here is excellent as expected and the quality of wine in Italy has risen dramatically in the last 75 years. Growing up I remember the straw covered chianti bottles with the melted candles that often tasted like your grandfather made it in your basement. Today, Italian wine is winning awards on a global basis and the quality is quickly catching up to the best in the world. Wines like Brunello from Montalcino and Chianti Reserve are fetching high prices on the world market. Here is a quick tour of the Tenutte Niccoli Winery that uses Varnacci and Sangiovese grapes that have been grown in the San Gimignano region since the time of the Etruscans.

The grapes are dumped into this auger which feeds them into the separator.

This cylinder spins and the grapes are forced through the holes.

The grapes drop through the crusher and are pumped through hoses into the fermentation tanks.

The grapes for the red wine with their skins are placed in large tanks for 2 weeks to ferment. The white wine uses only white grapes and is fermented without their skins.

After a second 1 week fermentation the wine is stored in French oak barrels. The white wine is stored at 15C and the reds are stored at 27C. 

This gadget allows the CO2 to escape during the second fermentation without letting in any oxygen, You can see the bubbles escaping.

The best part of the tour, of course, was the wine tasting at the end.