Italy

Fiorini Chianti is a tasty, medium bodied Italian wine with refreshing red fruit flavours, bright acidity which adds to its structure and makes it taste great with tomato based food.

It's a traditional style of Chianti made from 90% Sangiovese with the balance being the Tuscan grapes, Canaiolo and Ciliegiolo, and a touch of French Cabernet Sauvignon, which adds to the structure. All of the grapes come from the Chianti DOCG and the wine is aged in a combination of new and old barriques and large older oak.

If you love champagne but find its rising prices hard to swallow, try Italy's answer to the world's best bubbly - with this blanc de blancs from Lombardy in north central Italy. Vezzoli is renowned as a producer for making bone dry wines and this lovely lively, dry sparkling wine is a top notch example. Yeasty and fresh, it rocks into a citrusy purity of flavour a long, beautifully balanced finish from extended ageing on lees (decomposing yeast) for 20 months.  

This dry Italian red classic is a Super Tuscan is a superb collector's wine from the Tuscan coast. It is a non traditional blend of French grapes grown in central Italy;  Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot translate here to a dry, full bodied wine with balancing tart cherry fruit with darker tones of blackberry and plum. This vintage delivers especially chiselled and focused fruit characteristics that are elegantly framed by light spice, cola and earth. This vintage shows a heightened sense of intensity and territorial identity that is the hallmark of this storied estate.

Beautiful full bodied, robust Tuscan wine made from a classic blend of great French grapes. The dark berried intensity in this dry, earthy red comes from the dominance of Cabernet Sauvignon, which is supported by Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. All grapes were grown on the Bolgheri coast on a vineyard that was planted in the 1980s. Two thirds oak and one third concrete fermentation provide complex flavours in a refined, clean, sleek and silky red. It's structured to last for at least a decade and ripe so it expresses beautiful Italianesque flavours now too. Decant and enjoy in a large glass.

The vineyard ?La Rocca? is situated on the Monte Rocchetta hill, just below the medieval castle built by the Scaligeri family in the town of Soave. The micro-climate in this vineyard produces wines with a unique perfume and distinctive taste. This is a characterful wine with exotic fruit flavours and complex nuttiness.

One of the great Nebbiolos made from grapes grown in the Langhe hills in Piemonte, whose name means foot of the mountains and aptly represents the sometimes very cool climate in this otherwise warm growing region. This wine offers outstanding value and highlights the delicious line of flavour that characterises the Nebbiolo grape. Red fruit and vibrant acidity balance the surprisingly staunch tannin structure of the wine. It's made by Produttori del Barbaresco, which was founded in 1958 and now has 51 members who collectively own approximately 100 hectares of the entire appellation (itself nearly 700 hectares).

This wine is 100% Nebbiolo grown on various vineyards in within the appellation and fermented in concrete tanks at 28?C with 20 days on the skins, pumping over twice a day and five months in large oak barrels. It's a shorter and slightly cooler fermentation than the single vineyard wines receive which results in a smoother, softer, more approachable wine in its youth. It drinks well now and can age for up to five years.

A Prosecco is a prosecco, right? Well, yes, but this one has a little bit of that next level dry taste and intensity about it, while retaining fresh, crisp, citrusy notes too. 

Highly appealing and super refreshing. Top value sparkling wine buying. Certified Organic.

Barbaresco is now seen as being on a par with Barolo, as it should be, and this is a great example. The Rocca family originates in Barbaresco and Bruno Rocca took over the family business when his father died in 1978, moving quality up several notches to ensure that everything made by the family would be produced in bottle.

The family owns 15 hectares of vines and Bruno has something of a reputation for being a modernist, opting for French oak and shorter maturation times of 12 to 16 months. 

The wines retain their distinctive stylistic Italianesque stature, as this beautiful Barbaresco shows. 

This is a stellar wine from one of Piemonte's great producers, the Gaja family, which bought two vineyards in Barolo 1995 from a family named Gromi. The name of the wine, Da Gromis, is Italian for 'at home with the Gromis family'. This wine is made from two vineyards, one in Serralunga and one in La Morra. Grapes from each are fermented separately then aged for 12 months in oak, then blended and aged for a further 18 months in large oak.

Once regarded as a renegade wine, Antinori Tignanello has been a trend setter from the start and was the first Sangiovese to be aged in barriques, the first contemporary red wine blended with untraditional varieties (specifically Cabernet) and one of the first red wines in the Chianti Classico region that didn?t use white grapes. Today it is a blend  of Sangiovese (68%) with the balance being Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

Complex floral aromas lead into structured dark fruit, mocha and spice flavours in a wine with a medium body and beautifully balanced long finish. 

The history of Tignanello 

Tignanello was the first Sangiovese on the record to be aged in barriques, the first contemporary red wine blended with non traditional Tuscan grape varieties (specifically Cabernet Sauvignon) and one of the first red wines in the Chianti Classico region that didn?t use white grapes in the blend. All up, a big call. 

Piero Antinori first discovered the use of non indigenous grapes, and more specifically, those used in Bordeaux through his uncle Marchese Mario Incisa della Rochetta who had a vineyard at Tenuta San Guido in Bolgheri, and was making a wine using grapes better known as Bordeaux classics, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot et al. 

At first, this was for his own personal consumption, however was released in 1968 as the legendary Sassicaia.

Piero went off and forged his own path in Tuscany making wines from the local Sangiovese but also a select few made from Bordeaux grapes. This wine is a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc - and as these wines are prohibited in Chianti, the wine is an IGT and not a DOCG. 

For the Vigneti Romio line, parent company, Caviro has meticulously selected highly-regarded vine growers from Romagna and the finest grape varieties of the region, trusting in the winemakers that combine the most modern production processes and equipment with the experience gained over many generations.

This is a fruity, floral sparkling wine and has dominant notes of red fruits and hints of peach, resulting in a delightfully fresh and aromatic bouquet. On the palate it is fresh, tasty and crunchy with a tight and fine bead.

Impressive savoury Italian red with dark smoky flavours and fabulous complexity from traditional winemaking; long fermentation and maceration in oak fermenters known as tini, where fermentation takes place around 30?C followed by ageing in large Slavonian oak casks for up to 30 months.