What’s so super about Super Tuscans?

In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all Mussolini’s fault. Despite the endless opportunities Italy offered for enjoyment, Fellini never trusted his own country, or his countrymen. He could not relax into dolce far niente.

Perhaps he should have spent more time in Tuscany, surely the most civilised region on earth. Venice may claim to be La Serenissima, but among Tuscany’s gentle hills, hill villages and glorious cities, nature and man are in a harmony so serene that one can almost hear the music of the spheres. History has been kind enough to allow civilisation to flourish there, shaped by both bourgeois and aristocratic families.

The Medici started as bankers, and in the late 14th century a Florentine called Antinori featured in the city’s wine-makers’ guild. His descendants prospered. Twenty-six generations later, the Marchese Piero Antinori still makes wine, but there has been a change. In the post-war years, the Italian wine industry was not in a healthy state. It had long since been surpassed by the French.

For decades, many Italian wine-makers seemed to have no ambition beyond churning out a mass-market product that would sell cheaply, and deserved no better fate. It was the sort of plonk which youngsters would glug down with spag bols over the kitchen table. There was decent Chianti. There was also the stuff which came in bottles covered in straw, served by waiters waving 4ft-high pepper pots while singing ‘O Sole Mio’.

Although his family owned around 5,000 acres of vineyards, the Marchese Piero decided that radical improvements were necessary. Why should Tuscany restrict itself to the Sangiovese grape, which can make good wine but could also benefit from blending.