Home grown sangiovese for Italian tastes

NEXT time you’re cooking pasta or pizza, pair it with one of these top sangiovese picks.

Winne stock image Red and white wine splash Pic : Thinkstock

De Bortoli Bella Riva 2014 Sangiovese

$18

Region: King Valley, Vic

Best with: Pork, fennel meatballs

****

Three years maturity, barrel and bottle, at this price point, is an amazing bonus that appreciates what the variety needs to deliver its best drinking. It smells first of dried herbs, so typical of the variety, as well as damp forest leaf and floor, counterpointed with a sweeter vanilla/oak teased sense that drips into that point where you first taste. And as a good Italianesque red, it’s chewy with obvious tannin, finishing more savoury than fruit sweet.

Mediterrane 2015 by Redhouse

Mediterrane 2015 by Redhouse

$24

Region: Barossa Valley

Best with: Braised eggplant

****1/2

Crafted by one of our best-versed Italian wine experts, David Ridge, this is almost entirely sangiovese but with a tiny splash of lagrein and merlot. The style leans much more towards a rustic-country wine, showing meatier, stock like impressions, as well as earthy and savoury graphite and tarry notes, and if you look for it dark cherry fruit. It all translates to being much like a working man’s chianti to be drunk out of tumblers — and it really comes to life after airing for several hours, even days.

La Prova Sangiovese 2016

La Prova 2016 Sangiovese

$25

Region: Adelaide Hills

Best with: Salami pizza

****1/2

More than any of these lovey wines so far, this is the earthiest, dustiest, chewiest and clearly savoury — winemaker Sam Scott says this is stems from extended skin maceration of the fruit that comes from two warmer Hills sites in Macclesfield and Mt Barker. And yet, the variety’s cherry fruit notes bubble to the surface and sit in with that savoury cloak with a calm and sure balance. Typically it’s a farmhouse style that reeks of authenticity. Oh, and delicious to boot.

Coriole 2016 Sangiovese

Coriole 2016 Sangiovese

$27

Region: McLaren Vale

Best with: beef ragu, gnocchi

****

Coriole pioneered the sangiovese variety in Australia more than 30 years ago, so its older vine component of this fruit is now well settled and providing consistently attractive wines year after year. Perhaps the regional difference here offers a darker more familiar fruit character, though there’s no mistaking a more-ish, fleshy, herbal and savoury seam of flavours too, and of course that classic salivating, coating finish that just screams for the barbecue to be roaring full tilt.

919 Wines (Riverland) 2016 Sangiovese

919 Wines 2016 Sangiovese

$35

Region: Riverland, SA

Best with: Rigatoni puttanesca

****

The first lesson for newcomers to the sangiovese variety is that its smells and aromas are quite grown up and savoury, nothing like the fruit bombs you might otherwise recognise. But soak in those earthy notes, the tree barks and dried herbs and spices, and lap up the black skinned cherries as you taste, then chew over the mouth-pleasing tannins that tie all those vinous elements together and that’s exactly what you get here, more-ish, quite bright and cheery, and best at the table.