Монтеспертоли

Montespertoli is Chianti with the microphone of memory. The hill town southwest of Florence presides over a sea of vines — its Mostra del Chianti, held each spring since the 1950s, counts among the oldest and largest wine festivals of the region, a week when the town becomes the appellation's open-air parliament of tastings, parades and growers' pride — and the surrounding communal territory ranks among Chianti's most productive, sangiovese as the local landscape's grammar, olive oil its second voice.

The town's musical patron sang for the composers themselves: Amedeo Bassi, born here in 1872, rose from the Valdelsa to create tenor roles in the age of verismo — Puccini's and Mascagni's world premieres knew his voice, La Scala to Buenos Aires his circuit — and Montespertoli keeps his legacy in the Museo Amedeo Bassi at the castle of Sonnino, where costumes, scores and recordings return the golden age to its native hills; the museum anchors concerts and vocal celebrations that make the wine town a small shrine of the tenor's art.

Around the centre — church, loggia, Tuesday market — the roads roll to castle-hamlets and pieve churches, the museum of sacred art at San Piero in Mercato holding Filippo Lippi-school treasures. Florence glitters half an hour north; the vineyards advise against hurrying. A tenor in the castle, Chianti in the glass: Montespertoli pours both generously.