Val di Cornia DOC

The coastal strip of southern Tuscany between Piombino and the Colline Metallifere, facing Elba across a few kilometres of sea. Two DOCGs have since been carved out of it — Suvereto and Val di Cornia Rosso — and this DOC covers the broader range including the whites.

The History The registered file reaches further back than most: viticulture here intertwines with the history of the Etruscans and the Romans, and the earliest evidence it cites is Pliny the Elder, who records in Book XIV of the Naturalis Historia that at Populonia there stood a vine so large that a statue of Jupiter had been carved from its wood. Populonia sits on the headland at the north end of this zone and was the only major Etruscan city built directly on the sea.

The Terroir The file describes a particular pedoclimatic environment and optimal vineyard exposure combining so that the natural elements favour the vine’s vegetative and productive functions and a perfect, balanced ripening of the fruit. In practice: iron-bearing soils off the Colline Metallifere, mined since Etruscan times, mixed with sand and clay nearer the coast; a maritime climate moderated in both directions by the sea; and slopes that fall towards the west.

Grape Varieties Sangiovese leads the reds, with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Ciliegiolo alongside it — the same Bordeaux-and-Sangiovese combination that made Bolgheri’s name thirty kilometres north. Among the whites, Vermentino and Trebbiano. The zone also produces a Vin Santo and an Aleatico passito.

The Critical Take Val di Cornia is Bolgheri without the prices or the attention, and the comparison is fair on geology and climate if not always on ambition. The iron in the ground gives the reds a ferrous, savoury edge that the sandier Bolgheri soils do not, and the best of them — particularly from around Suvereto — are structured wines that age. The Vermentino is the quiet success: saline, precise, and considerably cheaper than the equivalent from the Ligurian coast.

Iron The Colline Metallifere behind the zone are named for what was taken out of them. The Etruscans smelted iron ore here from the seventh century BC, shipping it from Populonia, and mining continued in one form or another into the twentieth century. Slag heaps from Etruscan furnaces are still visible along this coast. Whether iron in the soil can be tasted is argued about; that it is present in quantity, and that it distinguishes this ground from the sand and clay of Bolgheri, is not.

At the Table Maremman cooking: wild boar, grilled lamb, acquacotta, and pecorino toscano with the reds; the fish of the Piombino coast and the anchovies of the archipelago with the Vermentino. Reds at 17–18°C, whites at 11–12°C.

Benchmark Producers Tua Rita, Montepeloso, Gualdo del Re, Petra, Ambrosini.