Vernaccia

Vernaccia di San Gimignano is Tuscany's most celebrated white wine and one of Italy's most historic, a crisp, dry white built around citrus, orchard fruit and a signature bitter-almond twist on the finish. Grown on the tufo-rich hills around the towered medieval town of San Gimignano, it makes wines that are pale straw-gold, fresh and mineral, with a lean, savoury backbone rather than showy tropical fruit. It carries a landmark distinction as Italy's first wine ever granted DOC status, in 1966, and was later elevated to the country's top DOCG tier. Long overshadowed by Tuscany's famous reds, it is the region's proud white counterpoint — a food-loving, faintly austere wine whose almond bitterness is its unmistakable fingerprint.