ontepulciano stands on a height at the southern extremity of the Chiana Valley in the province of Siena. An ancient legend has it that Montepulciano was founded at the orders of the Etruscan king Porsenna. According to that account, the king quit the town of Chiusi, along with the older community's inhabitants, to settle on the ancient hill of Mons Mercurius, the name of which was later changed to Mons Politicus.
From its earliest origins, Montepulciano was linked with wine, as is indicated by a red-figure kylix (wine cup) that was made in the Chiusi area and found in 1868 along with numerous bronze objects in an Etruscan tomb in the vicinity of the Tuscan town. The cup is decorated with the figure of Flufluns, the Etruscan Bacchus or god of wine, who is shown, in company with a maenad, playing cottabos, a game in which drops of wine were flipped at a special target.
There are numerous testimonials to the high reputation the wine of Montepulciano enjoyed throughout history. In the 17th century, Francesco Redi, who excelled not only as a physician and naturalist but also as a poet, hymned the joys and qualities of wine in his poem, Bacco in Toscana, which was published in 1685. In the poem, Redi has Bacchus and Ariadne extol the finest wines of Tuscany and the work concludes with the affirmation that "Montepulciano of every wine is king.''
The poem enjoyed great success and, passing from court to court, reached the hands of William III, King of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. It is possible that Redi and the fame he procured for Tuscan wines with his writings were responsible for the monarch's preference for those products. That predilection accounted for a visit by an English delegation to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany with the purpose of acquiring Moscadello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano for the Court of St. James's.
