Few wine districts capture class in a glass like Tuscany, from the $12 Frescobaldi sangiovese called Rémole to $150 supertuscans like Antinori’s 2003 Solaia. The region’s vintners often attribute their wines’ elegance to the complex soils and temperate climate of the famed Tuscan hillsides, and to the sangiovese grape, with its fine, firm acidity, gentle tannin and piquant sour cherry and redcurrant flavours. But I suspect that 2,000 years at the cultural crossroads of the world is more responsible. As with Tuscan art and cuisine, the area’s most famous wines—its chianti classico, brunello di montalcino and vino nobile di montepulciano—have all benefited from the passage of ages and the assimilation of foreign ideas. A recent influx of winemaking techniques from other parts of the world, and of such international grape varieties as cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah, is bringing even smoother, richer, more fruit-driven wines. And thanks in part to the introduction of French oak barrels, they’re easier to drink without long cellaring, though they can still benefit from age. Lamberto Frescobaldi, an urbane 40-something Florentine winemaker, personifies the modern thinking. His family has been in the business since the 14th century, yet he studied winemaking in California, and over the years he has brought in the likes of Napa Valley’s Tim Mondavi to help create the new breed of so-called super­tuscans that’s now standard throughout the region. Some worry these influences will alter the wine beyond recognition, homogenize it, smudge its soul. They won’t. Like the traditional sangiovese-based wines that came before them, the modern super­tuscans bear that certain elegance, integration and class that is unmistakably and still totally Tuscan.