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Vin Santo (or Holy Wine) is a typical Tuscan wine, perfect as a present, and on your table during the Holidays. The Vin Santo of Chianti is a sweet wine of certified and guaranteed origin. Its production is permitted in the provinces of Arezzo, Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato and Siena. The Tuscan Vin Santo is the symbol of hospitality: every family offers it to visitor according to its his jealously guarded recipe. In 1997 the certification for Chianti Vinsanto was established as a recognition for a wine that has always been produced in the areas of Chianti.
But there also is another reason for the institution of the certification. The wine is made with dried grapes, therefore the sugar concentration is higher than usual. Traditional Vinsanto reached an alcoholic concentration that by law required producers to obtain a license for liqueur wines (between 15 to 19 degrees, 30 to 40 proof). As Vinsanto accounted only for a fraction of wine farm production, or it was made at home, very few licenses were requested, resulting in illegal production. Thanks to the DOC recognition now Vinsanto has its own category and can be produced in total legality.
The Traditional Method
Traditionally this sweet wine was produced by collecting the best grapes and drying them on mats or hanging them on hooks. The tradition wants grapes to be set to dry in periods of waning moon, as the conviction was that this avoided rotting. After drying the grapes were crushed and the juice was transferred into casks of different woods and variable size (generally between 15 and 50 liters each), which had just been emptied of the previous production of Vin Santo. It was important that during the emptying the “mother”, as the dregs of the past production were called, remained in the cask. The “mother” was believed responsible for the quality of Vinsanto. The barrels were sealed and usually located in the attic of manor houses or otherwise in an attic because it was believed that the high temperatures of summer and the low ones in winter helped the fermentation and the scenting of wine. It is generally believed that three years of aging are sufficient to produce a good Vin Santo.
The Tuscan tradition does not include yeast to produce this wine. However, “wild” yeasts, responsible for the actual fermentation and correct aging of the wine, would be transferred in the wine during the non-sterile processing. The producer would never be able to guess which yeast would result in a good Vinsanto. Therefore the juice was set to ferment in many small different casks. If one or more produced good Vinsanto, that cask would be jealously preserved and its “mother” redistributed in other casks to produce an equally good wine. The reason for this is that at a certain alcohol percentage not all yeasts survive; therefore chance had to select one or more, if any, casks with a strong enough yeast. Traditionally casks were never washed for this reason, to preserve the qualities that produced a good wine.
Modern Method
However, modern production is completely different. As the “mother” also includes many substances that should not be included in wine, nowadays only new casks are used for each batch, and selected yeasts that are suitable for high sugar concentrations are introduced in the production. Nevertheless, the wide variety of aromas and richness of the traditional production are lost, therefore many producers add a small amount of selected “mother” to recreate traditional scents.