Administrative area · Italy
Tuscany
Sangiovese’s homeland, producing Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile, alongside the Bordeaux-blend "Super Tuscans".
About Tuscany
Sangiovese is Italy’s most planted variety. It gives high acidity, firm and often slightly rustic tannin, sour cherry fruit and savoury tomato-leaf and herb notes — a red built for food rather than for sipping.
Chianti Classico is the historic heartland between Florence and Siena, distinct from the broader Chianti DOCG that surrounds it. Its top tier, Gran Selezione, was introduced in 2013 and requires estate fruit and longer ageing.
Brunello di Montalcino is 100% Sangiovese from a warmer, drier hill town to the south, aged far longer before release and producing the region’s most powerful and long-lived wines.
The "Super Tuscan" category emerged in the 1970s when producers using Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, or dispensing with the then-mandatory white grapes in Chianti, had to label their wines as basic table wine. The rules eventually changed to accommodate them, and Bolgheri on the coast became their centre.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A political unit — an Italian region, an English county, a US county — used as a wine area because that is how the industry and its readers talk about it, not because a wine authority delimited it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
red
Brunello di Montalcino
Pure Sangiovese from a warm Tuscan hill town, aged for years before release — Italy’s most powerful expression of the grape.
red
Chianti Classico
Sangiovese from the historic hills between Florence and Siena: sour cherry, dried herbs and firm acidity, built for the table.
red
Chianti
The broad Tuscan Sangiovese appellation surrounding Chianti Classico — lighter, cheaper and much more variable.
red
Super Tuscan
A commercial category rather than an appellation: ambitious Tuscan reds that fell outside the DOC rules, usually built on Bordeaux varieties.
red
Chianti Classico Gran Selezione
The top tier of Chianti Classico, introduced in 2013: estate fruit only, longer ageing, and since 2023 a higher Sangiovese minimum.
red
Chianti Classico Riserva
Chianti Classico held back for longer ageing before release — denser, more structured and longer-lived.
red
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano
Sangiovese from the Tuscan town of Montepulciano — and, confusingly, nothing to do with the Montepulciano grape.
white
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Tuscany’s historic dry white, and the first Italian wine to receive DOC status in 1966.
sweet
Vin Santo
Tuscany’s dried-grape dessert wine, aged for years in small sealed barrels — nutty, oxidative and traditionally drunk with cantucci.
Climate
Mediterranean on the coast, more continental inland and at altitude. Sangiovese needs warmth to ripen its tannins but keeps its acidity even in hot years.
These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.
Soil and geology
*Galestro* — a friable schistous clay — and *alberese* limestone are the two soils most associated with quality Sangiovese sites.
WineHQ describes soil in terms of what it demonstrably does — drainage, heat retention, water supply, rooting depth — and not in terms of flavours it is said to transmit. Vines take up ions, not aromas, and no mechanism has been demonstrated by which a mineral in the ground is tasted in the glass. See soil and drainage.
Places within it
- Bolgheri — The coastal Tuscan appellation built on Bordeaux varieties, and the birthplace of the Super Tuscan idea.
- Chianti — The very large appellation surrounding the Classico zone, with seven sub-zones and a quality range as wide as its area.
- Chianti Classico — The original Chianti — the hills between Florence and Siena, delimited in 1716, and a separate appellation from the Chianti that surrounds it.
- Maremma — The Tuscan coastal plain, malarial marshland until the 1930s and now the region’s most dynamic new vineyard area.
- Montalcino — A single hill town south of Siena producing Brunello, Italy’s most powerful expression of Sangiovese.
- San Gimignano — The towered hill town whose Vernaccia was the first Italian wine to receive DOC status, in 1966.
- Vino Nobile di Montepulciano — Sangiovese from a hill town in southern Tuscany — and the reason "Montepulciano" is two entirely unrelated things on a wine label.
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Brunello di Montalcino
Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).
Try with roast chicken, fillet steak or grilled chicken.
Super Tuscan
Serve at 16–18°C (cool room temperature).
Try with roast chicken, fillet steak or grilled chicken.
Approximate centroid: 43.40°, 11.30°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico — Consorzio Vino Chianti Classico
- Italian DOP and IGP wine register — Ministero dell’agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF)
- eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register — European Commission