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

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