Central Italy comprises the heart of the Italian Peninsula, both geographically and historically. Lazio, which houses the capital at Rome, roughly corresponds to the ancient Roman city, while Tuscany equates generally to the older Etruria. Millennia later, Tuscany grew to become a major economic power in Italy, first as the Republics of Florence and Siena and later as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Before the Risorgimento, much of the rest of centraI Italy was made up of the Papal States, under direct rule of the pope and the Vatican. This guide will consider five regions as central Italy: Tuscany, Umbria, Emilia-Romagna, the Marche, and Lazio.
Central Italy begins south of the Po River basin, and, like much of the country, is defined by the Apennine Mountains at its center. Its climate is varied by not only latitude but, importantly, elevation, with many of the top wines coming from higher sites. With Tuscany, central Italy serves as a powerful driver of the Italian wine industry, home to many of the country’s largest and oldest winemaking families, such as the Antinoris and the Frescobaldis. The initial sparks of Italy’s 20th-century winemaking revolution were lit here, with the first bottling of Sassicaia in 1968 and the Super Tuscans that followed.
Today, central Italy is no less dynamic. Italy’s most planted grape variety, Sangiovese, achieves its finest expressions in Chianti Classico and Montalcino. Nearby, in Umbria, Sagrantino has been reimagined for the production of dry red wines. Further north, Emilia-Romagna cultivates the best-known appellations worldwide for sparkling red wine with its various Lambruscos. White wine, too, finds prominence in central Italy, notably in the bottlings of Orvieto, the Malvasia blends of Lazio, and the Verdicchio wines of the Marche. In addition, winegrowers throughout central Italy continue
The expert guides list Classico as a subzone. There are 8 subzones including Montespertoli.
"the Chianti region was officially enlarged in 1932 to include seven subzones: Chianti Classico, Rù…
Every reference I can find shows that Vernaccia di Serrapetrona is produced via the charmat method, and as far as I can tell with google translate, the disciplinare also stipulates that the carbonation is achieved via a 3rd fermentation in autoclave.
This is interesting because the part of the disciplinare on winemaking methods (article 5) refers to "spumantizzazione mediante fermentazione naturale" which means something like "sparkling by natural fermentation." The later section that specifically mentions the autoclave and the Charmat method (article 9) seems to be focused on the historic significance of the product and its link to the territory, and it's unclear to me whether these are requirements or simply background information about the history. Ian D'Agata's Native Wine Grapes of Italy describes Vernaccia di Serrapetrona as "made by second fermentation in the bottle" and VIA's Italian Wine Unplugged says it is "a bottle fermented sparkling wine." Will be curious to learn more if others can shed further light on this.
The two producers that I've been able to find information on both use Charmat, and it doesn't seem like there are many producers. Hopefully someone can explain the discrepancy.
Hey William and Michael! This is an interesting one. As Michael mentions "The wine thus obtained will be subjected to sparkling by natural fermentation." All this stipulates is that the wine must not undergo forced carbonation. Therefore it is up to the producer to make their own decision in the cellar. Most likely, the extremely labor-intensive requirements of a normal year's harvest, appassimento, and making two separate wines before blending into sparkling production, leads modern producers of the DOCG towards Charmat/Autocalve. Lastly, this is a region planted to less than 30ha which produces ~10,000 cases of wine a year, so the producers and examples of this wine are very limited.