The history of wine in Tuscany, from sharecropping to the “renaissance”, in the name of Tachis

The history of Tuscan wine, as narrated by the medievalist Giuliano Pinto, Professor Emeritus at the University of Florence, has its beginnings in the year 1000, when viniculture was just one of many crops, alongside grains and olive growing. It has always been a constant factor, in the religious sense. Subsequently, private sharecropping was established, while the demographic development in Dante’s Florence coincided with 250.000 hectoliters of wine a year being consumed. The most influential Florentine families at the time invested quite a lot in viniculture, and they started wine farms, marketing outside the Region, and actually only centuries later, laws to protect the denominations were introduced, at the beginning of the 1960s. Wine in Tuscany has since put sharecropping aside, so that its role in the economy of the Region is now fundamental; therefore, the last step will be the path towards a “luxury” product. This is, then, the background in which Giacomo Tachis made his “appearance”. His approach will be crucial to the evolution of wine. It is based on two fundamental points, the humility of observing the best (France) and going beyond the rules, to create wines that have made history, like Tignanello and Sassicaia.