Our Wines

Piedmont's weekday red. Dark-fruited, low in acid, finishing on the bitter almond note that comes from the grape rather than from any barrel. Vajra farms organically above the village of Barolo.

A blend of young-vine Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Barbera, Freisa and Albarossa — the whole Langhe read in one glass. Aldo Vajra took the region's first organic certification here in 1971.

The village co-operative — and one of very few anywhere in Italy whose wines are taken as seriously as the best private estates around them. Nebbiolo grown lower and warmer than in Barolo, so it arrives ready sooner.

A single hillside in Treiso, the highest of Barbaresco's three villages. Pio Cesare has been working out of Alba since 1881.

The wine that changed Barbera's reputation. In 1982 Giacomo Bologna put a grape then dismissed as rustic into new French oak and proved it could be serious. Everything ambitious made from Barbera since descends from this bottle.

One of the highest and latest-ripening sites in the commune of Barolo, and Vajra's home vineyard. Nebbiolo grown here is perfumed and slow to open — tar, rose, dried orange peel — with tannins that want either time or food.

From Serralunga d'Alba, the Barolo commune whose iron-rich soils produce the most structured and longest-lived wines of the zone.

Part of the Corvina, Croatina and Merlot is dried before pressing — the appassimento method used for Amarone — which is where the soft, dark-cherry weight comes from. Pasqua's Verona label, named for the city's most famous couple.

Fermented twice: once on fresh Corvina, Corvinone, Rondinella and Sangiovese, then again in winter over grapes dried since harvest. It sits deliberately between Valpolicella and Amarone in weight.

The traditionalist's Amarone. Bertani holds it in large Slavonian oak for years and releases it long after its neighbours have sold theirs, so it reaches the table already resolved.

From the Serègo Alighieri estate, in the same family's hands since 1353 — they are the descendants of Dante, whose son bought the land.

Masi's other single-vineyard Amarone, from a cooler and higher site at Torbe — leaner and more mineral in shape than the Vaio Armaron.

Sangiovese grown near the coast in the Maremma, where the warmth rounds the grape's edges off. Lighter and more red-fruited than Chianti — and, to our mind, the better glass with tomato.

Sour cherry, dried herb, and the firm acidity that has made Chianti the default with tomato and pork for as long as anyone has been pairing them. From one of Tuscany's oldest wine families.

The same grape and the same hills as Brunello, aged briefly and released young. The least expensive way onto this list to taste what Montalcino does with Sangiovese.

Sassicaia's estate mate — Merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon, built to be opened younger and priced to be.

Antinori's Montalcino estate, named after the railway halt that sits on the property.

Founded in 1977, the second estate established in Bolgheri at a time when Sassicaia was still almost alone there.

First made in 1971 and, from 1975, without the white grapes that Chianti's rules then required — Sangiovese with Cabernet, sold as ordinary table wine because no appellation would have it. It became one of the most expensive wines in Italy.

Created in the 1990s as a joint venture between Frescobaldi and Robert Mondavi, and among the first wines to blend Sangiovese with Merlot in Montalcino. Frescobaldi has owned it outright since 2005.

The wine that invented the Super Tuscan. Mario Incisa della Rocchetta planted Cabernet at Bolgheri in the 1940s for his own table; the 1968 was the first vintage released commercially, and it dismantled the assumption that Italy's great reds had to be Sangiovese or Nebbiolo. It is the only wine in Italy with an appellation of its own — Bolgheri Sassicaia DOC.

Sangiovese with a measure of Sagrantino blended in for grip — Umbria's own grape, and one of the most tannic in the world. Caprai is the estate credited with bringing it back from near-extinction.

Sagrantino carries more tannin than almost any grape grown anywhere. The appellation requires over three years' ageing before a bottle may be released, and it still arrives formidable.

The grape of Abruzzo, not the Tuscan town of the same name. Dark, soft in tannin and built for cured pork — from the same region as the dry pasta we cook.

Piedirosso grown on the volcanic slopes of Vesuvius. Light in body, faintly smoky, with the saline edge that volcanic soil tends to leave behind.

Aglianico from Irpinia — tannic and slow enough to age that it is sometimes called the Barolo of the south.

Puglia's heat in a glass — ripe, low in acid, generous in alcohol, with dried fig and cocoa behind the fruit. Genetically the same grape as Zinfandel.

Old bush-trained Carignano from the sandy coastal soils of south-west Sardinia, where phylloxera struggled to take hold and many vines are still on their own roots.

Sardinia's benchmark red, created in 1988 with Giacomo Tachis — the oenologist behind both Sassicaia and Tignanello — using only Sardinian grapes: Cannonau with Carignano, Bovale and Malvasia Nera.

Nero d'Avola blended with Cabernet, from the Menfi district on Sicily's south-west coast. The Cabernet lends structure to a grape that can otherwise run soft.

Nero d'Avola with Petit Verdot and Syrah from the Contessa Entellina estate in the Sicilian interior — the estate's flagship red.

Garganega, the Soave grape, from the Soave hills — but not labelled Soave. Roberto Anselmi walked away from the appellation in 2000 rather than accept its yield rules, so his wines carry only the regional name.

The white counterpart to Pasqua's red, using the same partial drying of the grapes — which gives it an unusually round, honeyed shape for a Veneto white.

Northern Italian Chardonnay in the cool style: no oak, green apple and citrus, acidity kept high.

The bottle that created the international taste for Pinot Grigio. Santa Margherita began vinifying the grape off its skins in 1961, producing a pale, crisp white where the norm had been a heavier, coppery one.

Friulian Sauvignon Blanc — less overtly grassy than the New Zealand style, more white peach, sage and a stony finish. Friuli is Italy's benchmark region for white wine.

Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc fermented together in barrel — the most ambitious white the estate makes, and the one that most rewards being treated as a red.

Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio, no oak, made to be drunk cold and without ceremony.

Chardonnay with Sauvignon Blanc — a little more weight than Le Rime, riper stone fruit, and a green herbal lift from the Sauvignon.

First made in 1985, and among the first Italian whites to be fermented and aged in barrique with full malolactic — Chardonnay with a little Grechetto, from Antinori's castle estate in Umbria.

Verdicchio from one of the Marche's most respected estates. Lemon, almond skin, and the capacity to age far longer than its price suggests.

Rome's own white, from the Castelli Romani hills just south-east of the city. Long before anything else on this list existed, this is what would have been on the table with a plate of amatriciana.

Abruzzo's everyday white: lemon, almond, and a saline finish that does exactly what you want alongside fried or grilled fish.

An Abruzzo estate that has worked the same way since 1964: grapes hand-destemmed, fermented with wild yeast, aged in glass-lined concrete, bottled unfined and unfiltered. Pecorino has only been part of the range since 2010.

Fiano di Avellino — an ancient Campanian grape, waxy and hazelnut-toned, and one of the few Italian whites that genuinely improves with a few years in bottle.

Grown around the village of Tufo, on soil rich enough in sulphur that the area was mined for it. That shows in the glass as a struck-match minerality. Firmer and more citric than the Fiano.

The most immediate of the three Campanian whites — apple, white flowers, brisk acidity. Falanghina may well be the grape behind Falernian, the wine Roman writers rated above every other.

Sardinian Vermentino, grown close enough to the sea to carry salt on the finish. The island's default glass with shellfish.

Gallura in the north of Sardinia is the only zone where Vermentino holds DOCG status, and Capichera is the estate that made the case for it.

Fiano grown in western Sicily rather than its native Campania — riper, broader, and the wine that showed the grape would travel.

Metodo classico from Lombardy — the second fermentation happens in the bottle, as in Champagne, rather than in tank as it does for Prosecco.

Glera from the Veneto hills, taken through its second fermentation in tank rather than bottle — which is what keeps the fruit forward and the bubble soft.

Founded in 1729, the first house established in Champagne to make sparkling wine and nothing else.