£15.88, Justerini & Brooks Good Soave, which usually means Classico, often doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as one of the most food-friendly of dry whites and, equally, as a wine that has cellaring potential. You can blame it on cheap, bland Soaves that have tarnished the name over decades, but it doesn't help when people like me recommend the same handful of favourite producers time after time. But not this week. I’m delighted to put a long overdue spotlight on the Gi

£24.99, Adnams If you're wedded to Rioja or red Bordeaux for Easter, don't let me stop you, but if you want something different, yet still classic, let me put forward this eloquent Barolo from a top commune in a very good vintage – perfect for partnering rosemary-spiced roast lamb or a porcini dish. With its fragrance of dried cherries, red berries, dried herbs, sweet tobacco and a gentle, woody earth undertow, it's a Barolo in which the signature structure of Serralunga d'Al

£7 on offer (normally £9), Morrisons This Sicilian red is new to the UK and a snip at the introductory price of £7 until 15 March. Even at £9 it's good value – dark, ripe and super-smooth with a tumble of black cherry, plum, kirsch and toasted vanilla flavours, gentle grip and a streak of Italianate agrodolce. It's made from hand-picked Nero d'Avola grapes, a proportion of which are dried, some of them left on the vines to dry, others dried on racks for about 15 days to lose

Each year the estate director of Ornellaia in Bolgheri chooses a single word to describe the character of the wine and reveals it at the wine’s launch. The word Axel Heinz has chosen for the 2019, revealed last week, is il vigore – strength, power, vigour. Given that the current zeitgeist around wine is more about elegance, freshness and even lightness, a word more readily associated with the powerful, strong wines of the Robert Parker era, might seem a brave choice, perhaps,

£10.99–£14.89, Costco, The Wine Society, Ocado, Vintage Roots, Cheers, Amazon A delicious, distinctive and original red wine seems a positive way to start the new year. That Santa Tresa's organic Cerasuolo di Vittoria is outstandingly good value and a magician when it comes to matching food only adds to its lustre. Cerasuolo di Vittoria, Sicily's only DOCG (the top tier in Italy's wine classification system), is a small but varied region – topographically, geologically and cl

£11.99/£9.99, Laithwaites, Averys This is as appealing as it is unusual: a white wine made from Sangiovese, Tuscany's principal red grape variety (and Italy's most widely planted). It's off-dry, bright and breezy with a whisp of smoke floating over quince, pear and green-apple fruit and a hint of Sangiovese's signature red-cherry in the refreshing, tangy finish. I said off-dry, but really it's more like medium dry; it's just that the acidity neatly off-sets the sweetness. The

£21/£18, Tanners Wines Riecine in Gaiole has always been one of my favourite Chianti estates and its wines have only improved since I first encountered them more than three decades ago with the founders of contemporary Riecine, John and Palmina Dunkley. The Chianti Classico is a lovely expression of pure Sangiovese: fluent and mellifluous, generous but elegant, concentrated but not heavy, long rather than broad. The family-owned estate is now run by winemaker Alessandro Campa

£10, Tesco A crowd-pleasing and pleasingly characterful unoaked dry white from deservedly fashionable Sicily, with peach, pear, herb and citrus flavours, a smooth, rounded texture and preserved-lemon and grapefruit-peel grip. Neither of the two grape varieties is native to Sicily – Fiano is from Campania and Grecanico is better known in the north as Garganega, the principal variety of Soave – but both are at home on the island and they make a good partnership, Fiano giving we

£8.50/£10, Morrisons I had scheduled this Tuscan red for next week, but it's on offer at £8.50 until 2 November, so I've pulled it forward to allow more time for everyone to buy it at the lower price, although it's good value at the full (£10) price, should you miss out. Morrisons wine buyers are understandably proud of the wine, which they make in collaboration with, I quote, "one of the oldest and most highly regarded wine estates in Tuscany". They're tight-lipped about who

As in part one, there's a cross-section of styles, grape varieties, origins and prices here and I'm going from high to low again, so that the more expensive rosés don't get overlooked (scroll down for the £8.25 Spanish rosado). There are some food suggestions along the way, but there isn't a wine here that couldn't be taken to the table, thanks largely to the more interesting textures we're seeing in so many rosés. Finally, a reminder that if you want a comprehensive review o

£14.50–£19.50, Aitken Wines, D Byrne, Sarah's Cellar, Corks & Cases, Kwoff, Blas Ar Fwyd, Chester Beer & Wine, Connolly's Wine Key to this wonderfully expressive Pinot Grigio are steeply sloping, sunny south/southeast facing vineyards lying at a lofty 550–600m, deep glacial soils and low yields from vines aged 15 to 30 years old. And key to the selection of these particular, extreme sites and soils is the PICA proprietary software owned by the CAVIT co-operative group in the

Now that winemakers all around the world treat rosé with as much respect as red and white wines, there are so many good rosés in such a diversity of styles that I'm dividing this year's round-up into two posts, with a cross section of styles, grape varieties and origins in each. And in a break with the past, I'm going from high to low in price this year because I don't want the more expensive pink wines (the first five in particular) to be missed. Scroll to the bottom and go

£13.95, The Wine Society If you're about to move on because you think that Nebbiolo isn't a summer wine, please give me a moment. It's true that the grape famous for Barolo and Barbaresco has a savoury, autumnal side to its flavour and goes well with lots of autumn foods - game, mushrooms, truffles – but that's only part of the story. It also has a wonderful fragrance – ethereal and haunting, as so often described – and in the Langhe hills it has notable elegance, as it does

Two things came together for Frescobaldi's Luce in 2018, a model vintage without any of the extremes of the previous year and the opening in June of a purpose-built Tenuta Luce winery. The previous 25 vintages of Luce, a Sangiovese-Merlot blend from the south of Montalcino, originally conceived and created in partnership with the Mondavi family, had all been made in Frescobaldi's Castelgiocondo winery. I've written more about it and a retrospective tasting I did in November 2

£13.50–£17.49, The Wine Society, The Wine Reserve, Old Bridge Wine Shop, The Fine Wine Company, Valvona & Crolla, Theatre of Wine, Cambridge Wine, Noble Green Wines Sometimes. Often. Chianti just hits the spot. I drank this Chianti Rufina, courtesy of the importer Liberty Wines, while attending, virtually, the André Simon Food and Drink Book Awards 2020 (no, no relation). Maybe it was the wine, but it seemed to me that the quality of the shortlisted books this year was on an

£14.50, Tanners Wines An enchanting example of Piemonte's flagship white grape variety, Arneis, from Monica and Daniela Tibaldi, young sisters who took over the family vineyards in the heart of the Roero hills in 2014. It has the prettiest of scents – floral, fresh, citrusy, delicately herbal – leading into a medium-full, soft-textured palate of fragrant white peach with a twist of lemon peel, minerals and preserved lemon. It hits the spot as an aperitif and could be matched

Paolo Bianchini, winemaker and former cycling pro, raising a glass of his Brunello di Montalcino at the tasting lunch in London in 2020 One of the things I shared with my first section editor on The Sunday Times many moons ago was a love of a good rags-to-riches story. The rise of the Bianchini family at Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona in Brunello di Montalcino would have been perfect. It isn’t quite rags to riches, but it’s a heart-warming story and all the more so because of t

£8.99/£9.99, Majestic Winemakers in southern Italy have been using the appassimento tecnique to make their red wines smoother and more concentrated, but a white given the treatment is a rarity. Perhaps it won’t be once more producers taste this Sicilian Grillo – a mouthwatering riot of passion fruit, candied grapefruit peel, pineapple, dried pear and spiced apricot, with succulent texture and pivotal acidity. The man behind the wine is the ever-creative Stefano Girelli, who h

Monterosola's stylishly labelled wines: two whites on the left, then four of the five reds I haven’t visited Monterosola in Tuscany, but having seen photos and tasted six of the eight wines I’m keen to go when we’re all travelling again. Geographically, it's very neatly located. The estate sits high up at 430m on a plateau to the east of the Etruscan city of Volterra in the Province of Pisa, between Bolgheri 50km to the south-west, San Gimignano and its DOC area to the east a

£9.99–£10.75, Ocado, Vintage Roots I recommended an earlier incarnation of this organic wine a few years ago as a perfect spring red. In August this year, in searing heat, I had the 2019 and thought it was the ideal summer red. I've just had it again on a dark, chilly November evening and come to the conclusion that it's a delicious all-seasons red. With its gem-bright, pale colour and medium body, it doesn't have that hearty winter look, but trades it for suppleness, freshne