Crimson & Olive & Cerulean

Olive (dark, muted warm earth) and Cerulean (deep, clear cool sky) are the most fundamental Tuscan landscape pair — the silver-green of the olive grove against the deep cerulean sky of a clear Italian summer day. Crimson (vivid, dark warm) provides the most dramatically passionate accent — the deep red of the Tuscan poppy or the terracotta tile against the grey-green olive and cerulean sky.

The palette is the visual world of the Chianti Classico wine region of Tuscany — specifically the landscape between Florence and Siena (the Chianti zone — Chianti Classico DOCG — the most celebrated wine region in Italy and one of the most beautiful cultivated landscapes in the world) in early summer (June-July), when the vineyards are deep green but not yet yellowing, the olive groves are their most vivid silver-grey-to-olive, and the wild poppies have just finished blooming. The Chianti palette: the deep vivid crimson of the Chianti Classico wine itself (the specific deep vivid crimson-to-ruby of a well-aged Chianti Classico Riserva — produced primarily from the Sangiovese grape — Vitis vinifera 'Sangiovese' — 'blood of Jove' — the most important red wine grape variety in Italy, named for its deeply vivid crimson-to-ruby color); the dark muted olive of the Chianti zone's ubiquitous olive groves (the specific dark muted olive-green of the Tuscan olive, which grows in the most quintessentially olive form on the steeply terraced hillsides between the vine rows); and the deep cerulean of the Tuscan summer sky in the Chianti zone (the specific deep, clear, slightly blue-green cerulean of the clear Tuscan sky — particularly during the tramontana wind period, when the air is clearest and the sky deepest).