This Traditional Tuscan Dessert Wine is an amber coloured sweet wine that was originally produced for use as altar wine during religious services.

However, being too good for just a once a week taste in church, it found its way onto our tables! 

Vinsanto is customarily served after meals with Cantuccini (almond cookies), perfect for dipping. 

Vinsanto is used in many recipes for cakes and chocolate like in the Pan Briacone from the Bonci pastry shop in Montevarchi, a cake which proves how pandoro and panettone are much better and much easier to digest when mixed with passito wines and vinsanto, two Tuscan specialities that should not be missed.

One of the specialities of Signorini Pastry shop in via S. Martino per Galceti, 36 in Prato is considered the Torta Briaga al Vinsanto, in which vinsanto, together with carmignano figs, is the main ingredient. A cake with a robust flavour, for those who truly love the vinsanto, infact briaga means drunk.

It is made with vinsanto, pine nuts, dried figs, acacia honey from Val Bisenzio, all wrapped up in a rich shortbread pastry. The heart of the cake is the jelly inside, made from vinsanto, sugar and starches.

For us one of the best vinsanto in Tuscany (and we think one of the best Chianti!) is the one at Isole & Olena wine estate, which is well known in Italy and all over the world for its great Chianti Classico wine and the I.G.T. Cepparello.

To reach Isole e Olena, exit at San Donato from the freeway Florence-Siena and drive in direction Monsanto.