In the northernmost part of Umbria, among hills with gentle profiles and cultivated fields surrounding Città di Castello, there is an area that is extremely interesting from a landscape and cultural perspective: the Upper Tiber Valley, a fundamental junction for cultural and economic exchanges between Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, and Marche; a land trodden by Templar monks, knights, friars, miners, farmers, artists, academics, and jurists. And if Umbria is the heart of Italy, the Upper Tiber Valley is its synthesis and expansion, managing to coexist, like light dispersed by a prism, in a strange and harmonious balance, diversity and tradition.
One of the products that expresses this synthesis is Vin Santo; some scholars trace the origin of this wine back to the Aegean Sea and its islands, today it is impossible to separate it from central Italy: we find it in Tuscany, produced with both white and red grapes, we find it in Marche, in the Picentini Hills with their rare and sumptuous Vin Santo di Vigoleno, and we find it in Umbria, both in the “classic” version and the smoked version.
The Vinsanto from Smoked Grapes is a dessert wine.
which is produced by small businesses using a grape that has almost disappeared, with a vaguely Shakespearean name: the Malfiore, also known as Dolciame. An indigenous Umbrian grape variety, historically prevalent in the municipalities of Città di Castello, Umbertide, Montone, Citerna, San Giustino Umbro, and Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, areas where agriculture was preferred over viticulture. In fact, this variety was often cultivated alongside field maples to delineate the plots of land.
The farming families in these areas had developed a processing technique that made this product unique, smoking. The bunches were hung in pairs (in couples) in rooms rich in smoke, due to the presence of chimneys and stoves, and this gave a smoky note to the final product.
Historically, each family unit in the area hung the bunches from the beams of the ceiling, in the kitchen or in the drying rooms, allowing the smoke from the fireplace to rise and penetrate the grapes.
During the nineteenth century, this tradition intertwined with another rising activity of the time: tobacco production.
The cultivation of tobacco has involved part of Umbria and Tuscany.
until around the 1990s. I still remember, between the late '80s and early '90s, the tobacco fields, the harvest in September, which was almost a ritual with the loaded tractor trailers, the smell of green leaves, and the pungent aroma that came from the dryers, where the leaves were laid out to dry.
In these places, the wine producers also arranged the bunches, exposing them to the fire and smoke of the large wood stoves.
Originally, Malfiore grapes were used, either alone or with Trebbiano, Malvasia, and also Grechetto, all harvested at not overly mature ripeness. Today, just as then, the process begins between September and October with the harvest; the grapes are then dried for three to four months, until December or January. This initial phase is followed by destemming, pressing, and fermentation. Finally, the wine is placed in small barrels for aging with the mother (an indigenous yeast often centuries old that all producer families have).
It is not an inexpensive wine. The aging period is a minimum of five years, and after 10 years, between drying and pressing,
The yield of the product is about one-tenth compared to the initial product.
The result is an amber, dark, and viscous wine, with notes of dried fruit, dates, and chestnut honey, black tea, and an unmistakable smoky note.
In 2014, a Consortium was established to give voice to the few producers (about fifteen) who still take care of it, and the "Vinosanto from smoked grapes" became a Slow Food Presidio.
It is not an inexpensive wine, and precisely because of this, it is a wine that helps to preserve traditions and biodiversity, keeps the flavors of the past intact, and allows farmers not to conform to a market that offers a lot of quantity but little diversity.
It is an ancient wine, made by sharecroppers and farmers.
It speaks to us about vigils in front of the fireplace, ashes, work in the fields, about lordly masters, about an undeniably hard life but aligned with the flow of time and seasons and the enhancement of the "Festival." The desacralization of all aspects of human life has mostly made room for things and a frantic consumerism; we can reclaim a piece of the "sacred" by carving out some time from our daily commitments to discover and appreciate all the diversity we have, perhaps starting right from the Upper Tiber Valley.
