Assolati, Vermentino Toscana IGT

Today’s wine is from a grape, and a region, that demands closer inspection. Let’s start with the grape, Vermentino: Grown throughout the Mediterranean basin (and known as Rolle in France), Vermentino loves poor, rocky soils and coastal climates. It’s a variety with beautiful transparency to it, in that it soaks up every element of its surroundings—the minerality of the soil; the ‘green,’ herb-infused aromas and flavors of the olives and scrub-brush it so often grows near; and yes, the sun, manifested in both texture and tropical fruit notes.Then there’s Montecucco, a region tucked between Montalcino and Grosseto in southwestern Tuscany, which is poised to have its moment—not just for its Sangiovese-based reds, which rival those of Montalcino, but for its whites from Vermentino, which derive great mineral depth from the rocky, volcanic soils of the zone. Though well inland from some of the other Tuscan terroirs in which it thrives (like the Colli di Luni, near the border with Liguria),