If you love Italian wine and food, you should organise a holiday in San Gimignano in Tuscany. San Gimignano is a beautiful city and, in addition to its famous tower houses, its museums and art places, the symbol of this town is Vernaccia, a very good white wine even though Tuscany is well known for its red wines.

The Vernaccia is produced in San Gimignano since 1200 and since that period had a flourishing trade and was considered an excellent wine. We don’t know the origins of its name, somebody thinks that it came from the Latin word vernaculum (= local) but Vocabolario Treccani says that the name derives from Vernazza a town where Vernaccia was produced since Middle Age. We surely know that Vernaccia wine was named by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy when in the Purgatory meets Pope Martino the 4th :

(Purg. XIV,19-24)

And infact we know that the personal Pope’s cellarman wrote, in a letter of order for 80 wicker wine bottles, that unfortunately the production was insufficient:

(extract from "Della natura dei vini e dei Viaggi di PAOLO III, told by Sante Lancerio, his cellarman").