[Music] hello everybody welcome to the wine with jimmy channel thank you so much for stopping by and we are an educational channel here looking at all the wset certificates in order to help you gain confidence to understand the subject to of course be successful in your examinations so in this one we are looking at italy for the wset level 3 certificate and this is going to be looking at central italy and that's starting foundation park climate grape growing and we're adding on the tuscan coast onto this section as always if you do have any comments or questions or concerns please do get in touch you can comment on this video below below the description and please make sure you click the subscribe button otherwise get in touch via the social media that you see at the bottom of every slide or direct by our website which is www.winewithjimmy.com please go over there we have a wonderful e learning portal where you can subscribe to the wset level of your choice and you'll get access to exclusive video content revision sessions multiple choice questions short written answer questions and answers plus a whole host of other things as well including flash cards very useful to help you in your revisions and your quest for passing the level 3 certificate okay so let's begin with our look at central italy so we are on this section looking at um the area mainly around tuscany but let's just have a look so this part of italy is most widely associated with the very famous grape variety sangiovese so this is um the grape variety that produces italy's most exported wine which is the famous chianti and all associate chiantis as well so things like chianti classico chianti roufina colisenezi and then all associated docgs and docs around that area there is a lot more to this part of italy than just sangiovese and we'll look into that on this section we have things like wonderful refreshing white wines and then of course premium full bodied reds from those local varieties like sangiovese but also international grape varieties such as bordeaux varieties they have a lot of success here as well so here you are now this is where we're looking at this is the first part of the central italy section italy in your textbooks is split into three the north the center and the south and we are mainly looking here of course at the central italian section which incorporates areas such as tuscany umbria lazio market and abruzzo so they're the areas we'll be focusing on throughout this series of presentations okay so central italy the other two have been kind of shaded out there just focusing on that middle section so here you are so we are located now south of the po river valley that is just north of this map and uh empties into the adriatic uh as a part of amila ramana on the border of veneto so that's to the north of this video of this map so we're to the south and the major geographical feature here is what i have identified on the map so it's dominated by the apennines which actually start off in liguria and then come all the way through here as we see on our map kind of going through the spine the center of italy and then heading to the south all the way down to the bottom to calabria and in fact a little bit of sicily so the upper lines is a very significant mountain range it runs the entire length of the italian peninsula okay so grapes are planted in the hills and the valleys of that mountain range because of course it dominates the landscape here and that mountain range the apennines provides altitude and also we have a moderating effect from the the mountains here which gives a more uh moderated climate so it actually mentions in your text that it's generally quite hot here but where we find the vines due to a bit of altitude and even some cooling breezes i'll get to that in a second we would classify this as a warm climate it's close to being hot but it's a region 4 on the winkler scale that's the degree days and we classify this as a warm and of course we're in the mediterranean here so a warm medite mediterranean climate in this area coastal regions on both sides of this part of the italian peninsula will benefit from cooling sea breezes so up here in markey down here in abruzzo and then places like lazio and tuscany up here so we have cooling sea breezes so those areas vineyards located on those coastal zones will have an effect from those cooling sea breezes okay so we're going to just have a quick look at tuscany first of all so here we are tuscany is this area that has um cities such as pisa florence and siena within it and they kind of form the central triangle of tuscany so tuscany stretches down the western coast of central italy and it roughly can be divided into three areas so i'm going to put the first one so we can see this let's do a big one so we're going to do uh let's do the shape here here you go big red dot the mountainous chianti region is about here okay so that's going into the apennines in the hills and mountains that's the mountainous chianti area then i'm going to do in green the uh in fact i won't do it in yeah i will do i'll do it in green the southern hills and valleys are below that that's down here and then we have finally the flat close coastal plain which is kind of here and here so it's all that coastal zone so that's a flat coastal plain so three areas that we're focusing on here now chianti will be covered in another video as will the southern areas like brunello de montoccino and vino nobele de montepulciano so they'll be covered in future videos the great variety though across tuscany by a country mile is sangiovese so it dominates and it's the most prestigious grape variety here it has very high levels of acidity and tannin it's also late to ripen so it needs the warmth of this climate so it's well suited and it's tolerant of drought which may be an issue in areas as you go towards the hills within chianti in the central hinterland areas oak is very commonly used with sangiovese to soften the very aggressive high tannins that it can have through oxidation and both small barrels and large barrels are used san diego's characteristics classically are plum and cherried notes maybe some blackberry and then with age things like mushroom and meaty and leather characteristics so we're going to now just look at the tuscan coast so to reiterate areas like chianti and brunello are covered in other videos but this is going to be focusing just on the tuscan coast in this example the tuscan coast is of course that part of tuscany which is on the ligurian sea or the mediterranean and it's been identified here there um let me get a little arrow out here for you arrow here there's the city of pisa there's the city of florence there's the city of siena so it's coastal area is south of pisa and levorno and it's all this area going down here and in fact below this map as well and it's going to be cooled by sea breezes that i have identified here on the map so you'll get cooling effects from those sea breezes international black varieties are very important here specifically bordeaux black grape varieties cabernet sauvignon and merlot but we also find others like syrup as well now in this area the um tuscan coast was the first to really witness the re sort of the birth of what we call super tuscans the original super tuscan was made from cabernet sauvignon sold for a very premium price and it was not eligible for pdo status because it wasn't following the rules of the pdo so therefore it was a normal generic vino di tavala a generic table wine but it fetched exceptionally high prices we can say that this is the birth of super tuscans and this is kind of coinciding with the likes of pierre angelo antanori with tignanello but also things like sasakaya for example in bulgari and these super tuscans are important because a number of things arose from super tuscans being created now the area was subject to very strict grape varieties a list of great varieties that they had to use but with the success of these super tuscans which were utilizing other international grape varieties we find that the laws had to change within tuscany they had to accommodate these new varieties and that's one of the reasons why we have a mixture of the other great varieties allowed in things like chianti for example we have mainly sangiovese there but we are allowed a certain percentage of other varieties including these international varieties also super tuscans because they gained an international high reputation for these cult wines it really helped re-establish italy's reputation for excellence and put them once again firmly back on the premium wine map now some will argue that it never really left however um there are of course no doubts that it help put it back on the top of the pedestal again many tuscan producers of course looked at this example of making wines from international varieties as well as italian varieties and blending them together and they followed the example you've got a picture here of something called varazano rosso which is a toscana igt many are bottled as toscana igt in the catsia in the casione gigarathika typica which is the whole area of tuscany of course but allowing for much more flexibility with the grape varieties but you've also got some very specific parts of the tuscan coast like bulgari which is actually classified as a doc which is a very high level of pdo so there are some parts that actually hold very high classification and let's have a look at it on the map here so back to the coast so in your textbooks it mentions the marema toscana now i've actually shaded this out because it's not bolded in your textbook but it's an area that allows for international varieties as well as local varieties and it's the moraina coast that's the name of the coastal part of toscana down here in the south you can see where it says m-a-r-e-m here so that goes all the way down there saying but the key one here is bulgari so this is that area here that yellow area there is also bulgari sasakaya which has its own doc but we're just talking about bulgari here which is very famous for cabernet sauvignon dominant wines but you can have merlot and cabernet franc even in the blend here as well for bulgari genetic bulgari these wines are therefore quite similar to a bordeaux but placed here in italy so i often say bulgari bordeaux both starts with bo and it is a a coastal area just like bordeaux would be of course this is much more consistent and warmer but still it makes those ripe concentrated styles which are like bordeaux in a very very warm vintage okay so that brings me to the conclusion of this first part of the central section of italy i hope you found this useful as we looked at the kind of main structure of the landscape here and the climate and then some areas around the tuscan coast there are many other videos coming up which will be available to you but then a lot of these are only available on my e learning portal that is www.winewithjimmy.com and you can find exclusive video content there plus a whole host of other key bits of information like flash cards and tests and short written answer questions and and all of those kind of things if you do have any comments questions or concerns please do get in touch by commenting on this video or get in touch via the social media channels if you're that way inclined or by the website wine with jimmy.com if you do find yourself in the wonderful city of london here in old blighty come and see us as you know i've got some wine schools and wine bars so come and see me for a class a glass or a bottle thank you so much for your time i've been jimmy smith cheers