From table wine to Toscana IGT: The 1980s in Italy and the renaissance of Italian viticulture – a success story.
BY OTHMAR KIEM
At the beginning of the 1980’s, the reputation of Italian wine was anything but glamorous. For Italians, wine was simply an intrinsic companion to food – not at all a high-quality luxury. Vineyards and wineries were primarily focused on quantity, to the detriment of quality. During the 1980’s however, a profound revolution in approach and quality took place which would change Italian viticulture forever.
A prime example of this development was Chianti Classico. Up until this point, the historic rules for its make-up – that white grapes such as Trebbiano or Malvasia Bianca had to be included in the cuvée alongside the main red grape variety, Sangiovese – were still in place. One of the first pioneers to disregard this rule was Enzo Morganti from the San Felice winery. As early as the 1968 vintage, he launched the Vigorello, which was made exclusively with Sangiovese grapes – without the addition of any white varieties. A couple of years later, Antinori followed with a groundbreaking step: from the 1971 vintage onwards he produced a Chianti Classico without the inclusion of any white grapes, and from a single vineyard, Tignanello. The result was that the wine was stripped of its status as a Chianti Classico and had to be declared as a simple Vino da Tavola – but was this a disadvantage? Quite the opposite! The Tignanello was a resounding success: more than 100,000 bottles of the first vintage were sold and the wine was snapped up.
At around the same time, another revolutionary wine was attracting a great deal of attention: Sassicaia. The Tenuta San Guido winery on the Tuscan coast opted for the production of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. This was an absolute novelty for the region and had been firmly in the hands of Sangiovese up until then. From the mid-1970’s, Sassicaia was officially marketed by Antinori paving the way for the creation of a completely new category of wines.
At the beginning of the 1980’s, the time had come to take the next big leap. New, innovative wines came onto the market in a veritable wave. In 1980, Cepparello from Isole e Olena was introduced, followed by Sammarco (Castello dei Rampolla, 1980), Flaccianello (Fontodi, 1981), Coltassala (Volpaia, 1981), Camartina (Querciabella, 1981), Cabreo (Ruffino, 1982) as well as Fontalloro (Fèlsina) and Percarlo (San Giusto a Rentennano), both from the 1983 vintage. All of these wines were sold under the inconspicuous designation Vino da Tavola.
It was the British Master of Wine, Nick Belfrage, who in the mid-1980’s first aptly described these new Tuscan wines as Super Tuscans. The epicentre of the revolution was Chianti Classico region, which suffered from a particularly bad image. Chianti Classico was often sold at ridiculous prices, and it almost seemed as if the famous raffia bottles were more in demand as decorative candlesticks than for the wine they contained. But the emergence of the new “Vini da Tavola” showed that Italy had more to offer.
It could, at last, compete with the best wines in the world. As Paolo De Marchi of Isole e Olena put it, this was the decisive turning point for the quality of Italian wine.
Since those pioneering years, many more outstanding wines have been produced, many of which are still at the forefront of the Italian wine landscape. With the reform of the Italian wine law in 1995, the wines once declared as Vino da Tavola were finally officially recognised and upgraded with the Protected Designation of Origin Toscana IGT. The revolution of the 1980’s had finally asserted itself – and changed the world of Italian wine forever.
Othmar Kiem is Editor-in-Chief and Director of Falstaff Italy.
