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,

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

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

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

Normally the Conti Contini Bonacossi family get through about 70 litres of their own organic extra virgin olive oil a year, but this year is different. Beatrice Contini Bonacossi says it’ll be nearer 100 litres because they’ve all been lunching at home. Lucky them: the oil in question is Capezzana, an estate north-west of Florence that, in addition to producing beautiful Carmignano wine, has been making olive oil since Etruscan and Roman times. No wonder they know a thing or

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

£19.99, Majestic; £20.99–£22.95, Hard to Find Wines, Armit, Caviste, Davy's This would be a wonderful bottle for the festive table if you're having a bird, meat, game or vegetarian (if fish is on the menu, find something in my Festive White Wine Guide or one of the lighter reds in the Festive Reds Guide). The 2016 vintage in Tuscany's coastal Bolgheri region was excellent, giving this dry red its opulent fruit, silky texture and waves of cassis, blackberry, dried cherry, frui

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

The past six months have been particularly rich in tastings of top Tuscan wines. Two of them, Luce and Siepi, I’ve written about in forthcoming articles for The World of Fine Wine. Others I’ll be covering in a blogpost soon, but today it's Caiarossa The estate's flagship wine I’m starting with Caiarossa because I don’t get to taste the wines as often as some other top Tuscan estates and, when I do, I’m always struck by the way the reds fuse complexity and seriousness of purpo

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

This article originally appeared in The World of Fine Wine, issue 51 A tasting billed as a UK first is tempting by any standard, but when presented by Renzo Cotarella it is doubly so. Cotarella – he hardly needs an introduction – is CEO and chief winemaker of Antinori, a youthful 60-year-old who has been with the company since 1979 and says he has no understudy but a team of 40 technicians. “I think what will be very difficult in future will be a single winemaker and a single

Ornellaia and Masseto are close siblings but very different wines, as I discovered on a recent visit All planted to Merlot – the Masseto hill near Ornellaia Two of my wine drinking, as opposed to tasting, highlights last year were Ornellaia 2000 and, from the same Frescobaldi stable in Bolgheri, the all-Merlot Masseto 1989. I’d resolved at the start of 2015 to open some of my most treasured, mature bottles with friends and family, instead of waiting for elusive, supposedly ri