Last night I saw meatballs cooking and mentally flipped a coin to decide between Spanish and Italian. Italy won the toss and had only one player on my close-to-hand rack (about five dozen assorted bottles all for current drinking or tasting - some samples are included - and all at room temperature): Tenuta Monte Rosola's 2004 IGT Super-Tuscan, 100% Sangiovese "Crescendo". The estate was founded only a decade ago by Gottfried Schmitt and his wife Carmen Vieytes. Just a few miles from Volterra and well outside the various Chianti zones, Monte Rosola was planted with just a couple of hectares of vines and many more olives (their olive oil is probably the best I have ever tasted). The majority of the vines are Sangiovese but there is a smattering of Cabernet, Syrah and Merlot here for their "Corpo Notte" wine which, as the name suggests, is a wine for the night time. "Crecendo" is, by way of contrast, a wine for the early evening as the sun sets. As the ev...
Musings on wine and occasional other subjects from The Big Red Wine Company's James Bercovici