How Chianti rose again

Italy’s phoenix emerges from the ashes of fiascos, frescos and a Renaissance

Vineyards on the rolling landscape of Castellina in Chianti, Tuscany

Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante and Florence Nightingale are all proud Tuscan-born heroes of our civilisation. Just to prevent emails of clarification, Florence Nightingale was born in Tuscany; indeed she was named for the city of her birth, but her family were super wealthy semi-nobles from southern England and she returned there when she was two.

Michelangelo put his Renaissance polymath brilliance down to the air and soil that he breathed, ate and ...