My wife and I just returned from a ten day vacation trip to Italy. We spent several days at a farmhouse on the outskirts of the walled city of San Gimignano. Simply beautiful all round! While there we were introduced to the local grape, vernaccia. We tasted many vernaccia wines and found them uniformly hearty and robust for a white. We became addicted to our afternoon bottle of vernaccia with bread, cheese and olives. That's over now. The real world is such a cruel place.
2006 Fugnano Vernaccia di San Gimignano
Color: Dark gold in the glass.
Nose: Pear, apple, cut grass.
Taste: Pear, lemon, vanilla. Seemed like a hint of olive in the background as well. Extended finish with lingering pear and another hint of olive. Velvety mouth feel and a nice density to the wine, more akin to a red than a white. I could actually see this wine working with lightly seasoned meats. May be too overpowering for fish.
FYI - We bought these wines at Wineland inside San Gimignano. The owner there is very knowlegable and quite helpful. We spent about 90 minutes tasting wines with her and learned a lot about the region and Italian wine in general. Highly recommened if you happen to be in the neighborhood. On a humorous note, we were tasting an earthy red and calling out what we were getting. In her broken english she said, "I am smelling a shit from the horse". Be careful of her humor and charm though, we left more than 300 euro with her. Money well spent.
