Grance Senesi is one of the newest DOC titles, formalized in late May 2010 and retrospectively effective as of the 2009 vintage, and part of central Italy's Tuscany region. Its arrival, 43 years after the Colli Senesi hills were made part of the Chianti DOC (as Chianti Colli Senesi), was a significant development in Tuscany's wine history. While the wine styles covered by the title are modern and forward looking, the word grance provides an anchor to tradition and the past.
Grance is the plural of grancia, which translates as 'grange' and denotes a farm or grain store. In the case of Siena, the local grance were owned by monasteries and managed by a grancere, a monk who administered the farm, its produce and its sales. Today the Grance Senesi ('Siena Granges') are vineyards and wineries producing grapes rather than grain.
The Grance Senesi wine portfolio, still too embryonic to have established its own reputation, is broad and stylistically comprehensive. It includes a standard red (rosso) and white (bianco), as well as five varietal wines (four reds and one white) and two sweet styles (a dried-grape passito and a late-harvest vendemmia tardiva).
Tuscany's favorite grape, Sangiovese, is at the heart of the rosso wines here. It constitutes a minimum 60% of the rosso, and is supported by Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Canaiolo. Each of these four red-wine varieties may also be made into varietal wines, and are complemented by Malvasia Bianca as the DOC's only bianco varietal wine.
The dried grapes used to make the Grance Sensei Passito wines are Trebbiano and Malvasia Bianca, the classic combination used to make so many dry and sweet Tuscan whites. This brings them into line with the vin santo wines made locally under the Vin Santo del Chianti Colli Senesi title, whose prior existence is presumably why the term passito is used here rather than vin santo.
