Biondi-Santi Rosso di Montalcino 2009 (Tuscany)

Biondi-Santi's Rosso di Montalcino is intended for earlier drinking than their long-lived Brunello. The 2009 Rosso is a softly-spoken kind of wine. Quietly assured, no clamour for attention, no tickets on itself, but lacking nothing.

It shows how sangiovese need not rely on fruit for appeal. There is only a faint hint of cherry here, with the wine relying on a savoury balance of tannin and acid. There is perfume, softly so, and gently persistent length. Ample room for food alongside a glass of this and fair value for the pleasure it offered.

Cork, $80-$90, 13.5% alcohol, Mondo Imports.

La Magia 1992 Rosso di Montalcino (Tuscany)

Rosso di Montalcino as a 21 year old? These wines are often intended to be had while waiting for Brunello to mature. Good makers can turn out fine wines as Rosso di Montalcino, but even then they are not always intended to age. It can also be where declassified Brunello ends up, for good or ill.

La Magia is not an especially storied producer. The Schulz family, from Alto Adige, bought land for their fattoria in Montalcino in 1979 and are now on to their second generation of Montalcino growers, producing wines, grappa and olive oil. The La Magia vineyard is south of the centre of Montalcino, near the Sant'Antimo abbey. South of Montalcino can mean lower, hotter, earlier with sangiovese (not to mention the international varieties appearing in Sant'Antimo from the 1996 revision of the DOC rules). But that is not what shows here.

Sangiovese stars in this wine, in its aged form of leather and preserved meats. Cherried primary fruit is well and truly gone, but sour cherry acid and ripe, gripping, sangiovese tannins remain. So much to smell here, aged fruit and something verging on cola. Savoury the whole way along, but flecked with gentle spice. Fine drinking tonight with steak cut tagliata style. An eye-opener for me, in how modest Rosso di Montalcino can age.

Cork. Auction. $30 plus premium and shipping. 13% alcohol. Website here.

New friends, Italian & Sons

A nice night with a table of eight people at Italian & Sons where half the people are completely new to me and the venue.

We started with rosemary focaccia and a plate of mixed olives. The bread, fresh from the wood-fired oven, even a touch undercooked, had a beautiful light slick of crunchy, savoury olive oil, sea salt & rosemary. Some of us has beer (Menebrea for me), others most of a bottle of 2008 Anselmi Soave (garganega) ordered (well) by an American in the party.

After my beer, a glass of Orvieto for me while the table plowed through entrees in share mode of kingfish carpaccio, sardines in saor, whitbait fritters and bresaola with rocket. Lovely. Groans from the table, especially the first time visitors to Italian & Sons.

Then a bottle of the 2009 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba. Please don't tell me it's a typo on the menu when I have had the 2008 here before and you've clicked over but not changed the wine list. Not as richly fruited as the 2008, even a touch warm, but good drinking with the food.

Part way through the food (Wednesday night is tagliata night, of salt/pepper crust eye fillet cooked in the wood oven, served with a horseradish aioli on rocket), we have drained the Barbera and move to a beautiful bottle of Rosso di Montalcino. Close to Montepulciano (not d'Abruzzo) in flavour, this wine (I will have to check the maker, this was a Tony suggestion) had an astonishing fit with the acid tang of the fresh horseradish sauce that went with the thin strips of wood-fired eye-fillet. Newcomers to Italian wine got this, straight off the bat. Well done, sommelier Tony.

Then the dessert round. I had cannolli with quince marmeleta. Beautiful. And the gambit of a few Italian digestivo for the table. First, Cynar (artichoke liqueur) over ice with a wedge of lemon. Second, a deceptively complex limoncello, chilled and neat. Third, a nocello (disappointingly dominated by insipid sweet hazelnut, rather than complex green walnut flavours). And Vince pulled a good short black.

I suspect Italian & Sons got a few new repeat customers tonight, and perhaps some coverts to Italian wine, even if not Italian digestifs. And great conversation with people from around the world, pulled together at this impromptu table. Another reminder of how lucky it is to live in Canberra.

At the end, back home, time for a real digestif. A glass of my own nocello. Made from green walnuts, grown two suburbs away, redolent of cola, nuts, lemon & dry spice, it's better than what I had tonight, and a fitting capstone to a good evening with new and old friends.