Bolgheri and the Tuscan Maremma

The Bolgheri DOC On The Tuscan Maremma Coast, Where Cabernet Plantings From The 1940s Produced The Wines That Created The Super Tuscan Category · Castagneto Carducci, Tuscany

In the 1940s a marquis planted Cabernet on the wrong side of Tuscany, on coastal gravel nobody thought fit for anything, and made a wine that had no legal right to call itself anything better than table wine. By the 1970s it was beating first-growth Bordeaux in blind tastings and the whole category of Super Tuscans existed because of it. The land is flat scrubby Maremma running down to a pine belt and a long grey-sand coast, and the approach to the village is five kilometres of dead-straight road under about two and a half thousand cypresses planted in the nineteenth century, which is one of the most photographed avenues in Italy and was made famous by a poem every Italian learns at school. Bolgheri itself is one short street inside a red-brick gate. Nearly every estate here requires an appointment, and the best-known ones are booked months out, so book the cellars before you book anything else and treat the village as the thing you do in between.

Via Lauretta 1, Castagneto Carducci, Tuscany, 57022, Italy

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the cypress avenue, Bolgheri village and the coast are public and never close. ESTATE VISITS ARE BY APPOINTMENT at times the estate sets, typically mid-morning and mid-afternoon on weekdays, with many closed at weekends, during harvest and through the winter. Village enotecas keep ordinary trade hours with a long early-afternoon closure. The Oasi di Bolgheri runs guided visits on limited days in the cooler months only. Book estates first.

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