Why it tastes like this
Why does Vin Santo taste like that?
Tuscany’s dried-grape dessert wine, aged for years in small sealed barrels — nutty, oxidative and traditionally drunk with cantucci.
These are the contributors WineHQ can name for Vin Santo as a category. Every one is a tendency, a convention or a mechanism, and each carries a label saying which. None of it describes how a particular producer made a particular bottle — real practice varies enormously, and a causal account that read as a recipe would be false for a great many of the wines it covers.
The grape
What does the variety bring before anyone does anything to it?
Trebbiano Toscano
TendencyCharacteristically very low tannin, medium-plus acidity and light-medium body. Commonly associated with lemon, green apple, neutral.
Not claiming: That every wine from this variety shows these characteristics. This is the range across the category, and site and winemaking move wines within and beyond it.
Malvasia
TendencyCharacteristically low tannin and medium-full body. Commonly associated with dried apricot, honey, orange peel, caramel.
Not claiming: That every wine from this variety shows these characteristics. This is the range across the category, and site and winemaking move wines within and beyond it.
Place and climate
What did the growing season do to the fruit?
Tuscany: mediterranean influence
AssociationA Mediterranean pattern of wet winters and dry summers is associated with reliable ripening and with mild late-season water stress, which restricts berry size and raises the ratio of skin to juice.
Varies: Where the dry season is severe or lengthening, the same pattern produces damaging rather than beneficial stress, and irrigation becomes necessary rather than optional.
Not claiming: That water stress is beneficial as such. Mild stress helps; severe stress halts ripening.
Winemaking
What decisions were taken between the vineyard and the bottle?
Appassimento (drying grapes)
MechanismDrying harvested grapes removes water, concentrating sugar, acid and phenolics. Higher starting sugar yields higher alcohol, and fermentation may stop before the sugar is used up.
Not claiming: That all appassimento wines are sweet. Amarone is fermented dry or nearly so; Recioto is not.
Oxidative ageing
MechanismProlonged contact with air produces acetaldehyde and, over longer periods, sotolon, associated with walnut, curry leaf and dried-fruit characters.
Not claiming: That these characters indicate a fault. In oxidatively aged styles they are the intended result.
Age
What changes after the wine is bottled?
Development in bottle
TendencyDecades. Dried grapes, very long cask ageing in small sealed caratelli and high sugar together make it effectively immortal, and it is released only when the producer judges it ready.
Not claiming: That a wine of this style will develop these characters. Ageing potential varies by producer, vintage and storage, and most wine is better young.
Follow it up
Style
Vin Santo
The taste profile, food matches, serving guidance and what to try next.
Science
Why wine is like this
The mechanisms behind each contributor above, explained at the scope they have been established.
Myths
What people get wrong
Several of the explanations usually given for wines like this do not survive checking.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Vitis International Variety Catalogue (VIVC) — Julius Kühn-Institut, Institute for Grapevine Breeding Geilweilerhof
- Italian DOP and IGP wine register — Ministero dell’agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF)
- Instituto do Vinho, do Bordado e do Artesanato da Madeira — IVBAM, Portugal
- UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology — University of California, Davis
- INRAE — French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment — INRAE
- Consorzio Tutela Vini Valpolicella — Consorzio Tutela Vini Valpolicella
- The Australian Wine Research Institute — AWRI
- Consejo Regulador de las Denominaciones de Origen Jerez-Xérès-Sherry — Consejo Regulador del Jerez