San Gimignano looks like a town plucked from a fairy tale and set into the Tuscan countryside.

It can easily be seen in a day as it is just an hour's drive from either Siena or Florence. The countryside, fields and forests are draped over the hills, with towns, castles, and churches scattered here and there. It looks lifted from a fourteenth century painting. Sant'Agostino, the finest of the surviving monasteries is a fine example of Renaissance architecture.

The town is Etruscan in origin, its rise to prominence began towards the end of the 9th century, when the Bishop of Volterra gave it permission to hold a weekly market. A second ring of walls was completed in the year 1199.

Hundreds of years ago the residents grew crocuses and exported saffron throughout the known world; the ancient art is now being revived by Brunello Bertelli, who painstakingly hand-fertilizes the flowers and later collected the precious stigmas.

Vernaccia, a white wine whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time, is produced here - some even suggest that the grapes used to make it were brought by the Etruscans. In any case, over the centuries the vines adapted superbly to the soil, and by the Renaissance Vernaccia was considered Italy's finest white wine. It is distinctive and unique, and the best is excellent: powerful and full-bodied, with a rich, heady bouquet and a crisp clean taste that lingers long on the palate, a golden-hued wine.