Argiano 2005 Brunello di Montalcino (Tuscany)

Seven years can be the charm for sangiovese, much as it can be for shiraz. Seven years from vintage, cork gods being kind, sangiovese based wines not explicitly built for early drinking will have often taken on some softening of tannins without hollowing out the fruit.

This bottle of the 2005 vintage Brunello from Argiano drank well at dinner last Friday. A thank-you night for the people who helped me pick the sagrantino I have planted at Quarry Hill, we had dinner at Dieci e Mezzo in Canberra. After a Campari and soda and some Prosecco, we got into the food and this bottle.

A deep colour, there are pleasant candied cherry and nutty things to smell. And oak. Oak does show in the wine, but the fruit is not totally swamped. Argiano keeps their Brunello in oak for two and half years, starting with a year in French oak small barrels, before moving the wine to Slavonian oak in larger format botti for another year and half or so. A kind of new-school-plus-old-school approach. A bet each way?

There is oak on the palate too, but also ripples of sangiovese tannin. The overall impression is of fruit ageing gracefully, with oak as a buttress more than a distinct ingredient. Worth a look if you see it on a list and have a hankering for Brunello spread across old and new styles. I suspect the 2007 vintage is the current retail.

Website. $120 (list price). Cork sealed.

Hamilton's Bluff Sangiovese 2005 (Canowindra)

The Hamilton's Bluff vineyard at Canowindra can turn out the goods with sangiovese. Not too close to the richer, wetter and hotter parts of the district (near Cowra in NSW), there is vigour enough for the vines without washing out colour and flavour. But what I have enjoyed about the couple of vintages of this I have had, including this 2005, is that there is a distinctiveness to the wine. It has a softly-aged richness of texture, something gently-creamy about it, that is genuinely appealing. As well as being an excellent example of graceful aging under screwcap, at around $25 a bottle this is both good value and a good return to the people who grew the fruit, made the wine and brought it out to market in its prime. Roast lamb with borlotti beans cooked off in the tray at the end of the roast makes a good match, or just good bread & a bottle of spicy olive oil.

Their website is worth a look, both for the wine and Julia Andrews' writing about their vineyard, business and local area. Personal and personable.

Argiano 2005 Brunello di Montalcino

Brunello with a bit of age on it can be dead-right drinking with Italian grilled meats. There is something so right about the fit between charred meat and grilled nut-skin tannins.

Argiano's 2005 bottling of Brunello comes out light in the glass. Less an orange rim from development - more a wine that will have been light in colour the whole time. An observation from my dining companion: have you ever seen an Australian sangiovese of that colour? I struggle to think of an example of an Australian sangiovese that has the light-red sparkle in the glass, like a lighter-hued pinot, rather than a deeper red.

We have polenta fritters stuffed with gorgonzola, rosemary focaccia from the wood-fired oven, and some smallgoods (proscuitto & capocollo) to start. The wine does well. It does that Brunello thing of leading with tannin, then refreshing acid, then fruit tucked in behind. The tannins really do taste and feel like the skins of grilled nuts (hazels, especially). A tagliata, again from the wood oven, of beef crusted in salt & pepper, served on radicchio & rocket, with a horseradish sauce, also sits well with the wine. I finish with some truffled pecorino, the last of the wine, and a good short black.

Good eating (at Italian & Sons), good company and a bottle of Brunello. Enough to feel lucky about, really.

About $120 (list price), sealed with a cork.