When Laetitia leads tours in Tuscany, the always enjoys the region’s excellent wine and olive oil. Chianti, one of the region’s best known products, wasn’t always a fine wine. During much of the twentieth century, it was mass marketed in round straw-wrapped bottles that were a favorite of students and often ended up as candle holders in dorm rooms. Interestingly, that style of bottle is called a “fiasco.” In the 1990s, the Italian government implemented new regulations, adopting a Sangiovese-based recipe for Chianti wine developed by Bettino Ricasoli during the nineteenth century.
A local wine became the subject of the day’s limerick.
On a trip south of Florence you ought to go
And sample their Chianti Classico
From grapes Sangiovese
Grown on Tuscan hills hazy
‘Tis a wine you will find most simpatico.