Ansonica – the vine rooted into the Tuscan Coast

Long a staple for everyday wine, Ansonica – aka Inzolia – is getting a makeover on the Tuscan coast. Corinna Vicenzi is shown here, leaning on a stack of crates with shrivelled, sun-dried Ansonica bunches destined for a sweet wine from her Il Cerchio estate.

This is the unedited, original version previously published on www.JancisRobinson.com.

Inzolia, with over 7,000ha one of Sicily’s most planted varieties, never struck me as especially remarkable, because the majority of wines it is turned into is made in a squeaky-clean, cold-ferment-stainless-steel-tropical-fruit-basket style.

I just turned my back on it, but had a rude awakening about a year ago when I came across Le Formiche’s Ansonica (one of Inzolia’s synonyms), a complex version originating from two windswept vineyards on a narrow strip called Costa dell’Argentario, in the south of the Maremma.

Le Formiche’s two Ansonicas, one fermented on the skins, the other without, took me completely by surprise with their stunning saline, iodine perfume and purity. Ansonica has been cultivated along the Tuscan coast for centuries, but the variety never received the respect it deserved, it being a staple of daily life and often made in a coarse and careless way. Le Formiche shows a whole different and more truthful side of Ansonica, showing it is the perfect canvas on which to paint the coastal Argentario terroir, which they do with aplomb.

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