Wine TrailsEtruscan Coast.
Unspoilt beaches and green pine groves, seaside holidays and golden tans, long walks and disco nights: the Etruscan Coast offers all this and much more.

Great wines are also produced here, to the extent of attracting writers of specialist magazines and connoisseurs throughout the world. A few miles from Bolgheri is a place called La California - maybe it was fate that led to this area being christened the "California" of Italy, or indeed, sometimes, the Italian "Bordeaux". All this was due to the efforts the two Della Gherardesca sisters (one may recall Count Ugolino in Dante's Divine Comedy), one of whom married an Incisa della Rocchetta, the other an Antinori. Mario Incisa "invented" "Sassicaia", considered by one authoritative magazine to be "the most famous Italian wine in the world", while the Antinori family contributed their experience as one of the most prestigious wine-growers in the world. Lodovico Antinori created one of the most fascinating cellars in the world, and for his "Ornellaia" received an award for the best Italian Cabernet from the magazine Decanter in 1995. Piero Antinori transformed the production of rosé, very fashionable in the seventies, into the magnificent "Guado di Tasso", which immediately found a place among the top wines of the country. But the process did not stop with Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Guado di Tasso. There was a flowering of young and enthusiastic producers, who soon joined the highest echelons in enology with well-deserved fame, not just in the neighbourhood of Bolgheri, but also with DOC wines from adjacent Montescudaio, Val di Cornia and Elba.

Thus arose the Etruscan Coast Wine Trail with its great wines, keen young producers plus, above all, a landscape situated in a strip which runs parallel to the sea. It contains all that a visitor might wish for - medieval towns in which life is led at a more human pace, hills covered with dense woods where it is not unusual to encounter wild boars, roe deer and fallow deer, views that blur the green of the vegetation with the intense blue of the sky, friendly and welcoming locals, and natural tasty food that makes one long to taste the wines which are the fruit of this land. The Trail will provide you with a sublime itinerary that embraces culture, environment and, of course, fine wines and cuisine. From the three northernmost Comuni, Montescudaio, Guardistallo and Casale, in the ancient fief of the Della Gherardesca family, we can reach, possibly with appropriate detours, Montecatini Val di Cecina in which the mining of copper traditionally took place.

Most of the wineries are to be found in the outskirts of the villages, around Castellina Marittima and Montecatini. Between Casale and Bolgheri, we cross Bibbona, which boasts a nature reserve (La Macchia della Magona, 1,635 hectares), full of little paths through the woods, which can be followed on foot, by bicycle or horse. In the central part of the area, the Trail takes us to Bolgheri with its noble castle and memories of the writer Carducci (Grandmother Lucia's little cemetery and the cypress-lined avenue are a must!). The road from here to Castagneto is one of the prettiest tree-lined roads in the region - along the road we find the Sassicaia vineyards and the Ornellaia and Le Macchiole production plants. Lessons in the "cold" working of extravirgin olive oil may be enjoyed in the olive-pressing works not far from the road. Castagneto Carducci, a farming town of medieval origin, sits astride a landscape that is rich in olive groves, vineyards, woods and thickets and which stretches to the azure blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

From here the trail winds into a wooded area, through the natural charms of Sassetta and on to Suvereto, the centre of DOC "Val di Cornia" wine. Apart from the evident attractions of the ancient medieval towns of Suvereto and Campiglia, the visitor will find fascinating the Parks of Montioni, Monte Calvi and Lagoni Rossi as well as the Campiglia Archeological/Mineralogical Park with its San Silvestro Rock and remains of Etruscan mines and foundries. The "enotourist" will find his heart's content in this beehive of activity where young wineries are trying to imitate the great wines of Bolgheri, excellent Cabernets and Merlots, as well as lesser wines which are more traditional, but processed in the way that today's market dictates. Piombino, famous for its steelworks, is the gate to the island of Elba, which was defined by Pliny as "Insula vini ferax", that is, the island abounding in wine. The sea, the climate and natural attractions have superseded agriculture in importance, yet importance is beginning to be given to wine again, and visitors will enjoy themselves going in search of a rare bottle of the real Aleatico wine, with its intense scent of fruit preserves and oriental spices.