Of Italy's regions, Toscana's revolution is probably the most noticeable by wine drinkers worldwide as this region shifted from a supplier of straw basket Chianti to one of the nation's most creative producers of premium wine. <p>Chianti is the region's most obvious centre of progress but much has been made of Toscana's other classical reds including Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano . Furthermore, the growing reputation of table wines known as Super Tuscans as well as the astounding improvement of white wine has definitely reinforced the newfound reputation of this central region.

Of all the regions of Italy, Tuscany is the most lauded, the most photographed and the most written about. And, certainly, it is the most visited, because, of course, in Tuscany one finds the fabled city of Florence, and Pisa with its leaning tower, and Chianti, over-flowing with wine, and Siena with its raucous medieval festivals, and Vinci, the birth place of Leonardo, and a dozen - no two dozen! - other storied places, all set in a gorgeous, rolling, verdant landscape, through which flows the Arno River and a myriad of other streams that send their waters westward into to the Tyrrhenian Sea. <p> In Tuscany, the attractions of the physical landscape are matched by an intensely compelling human history, and of course, by the profound architectural and artistic works that one finds everywhere in the Region. And then, there is Tuscan cuisine, and Tuscan music, and Tuscan writing, and Tuscan language - the ancient, evolving dialect - the language of Dante Alighieri - that is the font of modern Italian. And of course the glorious wine.</p>