Vin Santo

Origin of the name: ‘There is ‘more than one explanation. The one I remember the most is that during a meeting between the Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church in Florence in the late 15th century, they served this wine for the Bishop of Cyprus. They said this wine comes from Santos, and Santos in Tuscany became Santo, Vin Santo. To make a long story short,’ Federico Giuntini-Masseti of Fattoria Selvapiana told me in an interview for GrapeCollective.

With food: The classic partners for Vin Santo in Tuscany are ‘cantucci’ or oblong-shaped almond biscuits (Burton Anderson: 1990, p.200). The biscuits originated in Prato, Tuscany. They are crunchy, dry rather than moist in texture, and dry rather than or sugary tasting. The ingredients, as defined by pastry chef Antonio Mattei in the nineteenth century, are flour, sugar and eggs, with pine nuts (‘pinoli’) and almonds (unskinned, unroasted). The dough is cooked as a large slab. This is then sliced and the biscuits are cooked again.