Region: Tuscany

Zone:

Elba DOC

Italy’s third-largest island, Elba, located in the Livorno province, has been known for its wine since the Etruscans dominated the island. Pliny the Elder also speaks about the wines from this region, ’vini farax’, which at that time had a robust and powerful character, resulting from the island’s iron-rich soil. Even at that time wine was a big export item to the mainland.

in 1595, to protect the wine production, Ferdinando d. I de' Medici instituted countless regulations in order to protect the vineyards from being damaged by the increasing livestock.

As you know, a certain emperor Napoleon I lived on the island during his involuntary exile, and he also discovered that the island’s wine was interesting, and the emperor supported further expansion of the vineyards during his sojourn. A short time after, when he left Elba to keep his standing appointment to retake Paris, the emperor remarked, ”Elba’s residents are strong and healthy, because the island’s wine gives them strength and good health.”

Elba’s current health condition is unknown to the authors, but today the island is most known as a romantic and beautiful vacation paradise, and the tourists never neglect to take liberally of the island’s wine. That can be one of the reasons why you don’t find much of the wine on the European mainland. It actually seems like the producers try to accommodate the wine to the island’s many tourists, who actually consume more wine than the island is capable of producing.

One way to accommodate wine production to demand might be evident in the fact that the previous powerful wines have now been replaced by lighter, more fruity wines.

On Elba, it’s mostly about white wine, and they concentrate on productive grape types like Trebbiano and Ansonica. In terms of red wines, the most important grape is Sangiovese, and these red wines are good and honest.

At times, they experiment a great deal with the sweet white wines from Moscato and sweet red wines using the Aleatico grape.

As in antiquity, wine production still has great meaning on Elba. Thus a fourth of the island’s surface area is covered by vineyards.

Read more about the wines from Elba DOC by clicking i the top menu in the right side.