#Sangiovese

Dec 16, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: La Scelta di Sofia Sangiovese di Toscana Bianco 2020, Italy

£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

Nov 25, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Riecine Chianti Classico 2019, Italy

£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

Oct 21, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: The Best Toscana 2019, Tuscany, Italy

£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

Jun 30, 2021

Acidity – Something to be Celebrated Not Feared: the launch of Luce 2018

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

Apr 15, 2021

WINE OF THE WEEK: Selvapiana Chianti Rufina 2018, Italy

£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

Jan 5, 2021

Monterosola: Sitting Pretty Between Tuscany's Stars

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

Oct 28, 2020

Sipping Siepi with the Best of 'Em

Gnocchi with girolles, chanterelles and black truffle paired with the 2011 vintage of Castello di Fonterutoli's super-Tuscan Siepi, at a dinner hosted by Giovanni Mazzei at The Petersham restaurant in London The text of this article was first published in The World of Fine Wine issue 64 The first person I met at the Siepi winemaker dinner at The Petersham restaurant in London’s Covent Garden was an engagingly conversational Jermyn Street shirtmaker. He didn’t say whether he c

Oct 24, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Castello Collemassari Montecucco Rosso Riserva 2015, Tuscany, Italy

£14.99, Waitrose This is the perfect wine for people who like the thought of Chianti but sometimes find the reality too lean and tangy. It has Sangiovese's earth-sweet tobacco and autumn-forest flavours, but it's plump and fleshy with a velvet texture and perfumed cherry fruit. It's polished and structured but slips down effortlessly – in other words, the flavour of Sangiovese but none of the potential pain. The Montecucco wine region is in warmer southern Tuscany, sandwiched

Jun 24, 2019

A new Tuscan superstar?

After a career steering many of Tuscany's top wines into the limelight, Carlo Ferrini, the consultant to so many glittering Italian estates, is now making wine from his own 2.5ha of Sangiovese in southeastern Brunello di Montalcino. I have only tasted the 2013, his fourth vintage, made from 12 year-old vines, but on this showing there seems no doubt that the exceptionally elegant and intense Giodo is one of the fine wine world’s new stars. Ferrini searched for years, apparent

Mar 1, 2019

4 top Italian reds – from Tuscany, Trentino and Lombardy

Tasting notes on another four impressive Italian recent releases, following on from my Caiarossa blog The four wines – San Leonardo from Trentino, Conte Vistarino Pinot Nero Bertone (awaiting its proper label) from Lombardy and the two Tuscans, Poggio Valente from the Maremma and Le Serre dell'Ornellaia from Bolgheri San Leonardo 2013, Vigneti delle Dolomiti, Trentino San Leonardo is the flagship wine of the eponymous tenuta (estate) in Trentino and is one of Italy’s iconic r

Feb 28, 2019

WINE OF THE WEEK: Antonelli Montefalco Rosso 2015, Umbria, Italy

£12.75 (on offer), Jeroboams Montefalco Rosso is one of my go-to Italian reds when I'm in Italy, an approachable alternative to Umbria's Sagrantino Montefalco, the monumental cult red that gets its tannic power and longevity from the Sagrantino grape. The Rosso is Sangiovese-based but has to include 10–15% Sagrantino, enough for its perfume, intensity and backbone to make an impact. Antonelli's blend of 70% Sangiovese and 15% each of Sagrantino and Montepulciano is a lovely e

Feb 5, 2019

Affordable Italians from the south and Tuscany

My latest Wine of the Week was one of six Italian wines I tasted from Tanners. I could happily have chosen any of the other five, so I'm posting notes on them. The first two are new in and from the same Abruzzo producer as my Wine of the Week. The other three are described as "old faithfuls" by Tanners. Tenuta del Priore Col del Mondo Sunnae Abruzzo Bianco 2017, £10.95 You don't see white Abruzzo very often – a shame if this lees-matured blend of Trebbiano, Passerino and Peco

Apr 4, 2018

White Beauty: a Tuscan debut

Wine exam question: Explain what is meant by white Sangiovese. When I first heard about a Sangiovese bianco, I didn’t know if we were talking about a white mutation of the Sangiovese grape (like the white Cabernet Sauvignon found in an Australian vineyard in the 1980s and now propagated under the name Shalistin) or a Blanc de Noirs, a white wine made from red Sangiovese grapes. It didn’t take long to find out that it’s the latter. The debut vintage of Reimitz Sangiovese bianc

Oct 6, 2016

WINE OF THE WEEK: Bibbiano di Fattoria Chianti Classico 2014, Tuscany, Italy

£9.99, Co-op It speaks volumes both about the quality of this wine and the quality of the producers from which the Co-op sources its wines that the other retailer of a Chianti Classico produced by Bibbiano is Berry Bros & Rudd. Wine merchants don’t come with greater pedigree or authority than Berry Bros of London St James’s. The Co-op, in contrast, is a retailer to the masses, with 2,800 stores at the price-conscious end of the market. But the Co-op’s wine buyers care about t