A heavenly sweetie

This red is a fine example of this famous sweet style from Tuscany.

Matthew Jukes
By
published
in Features

2006 Vin Santo del Chianti Rufina, Selvapiana, Tuscany, Italy (£35.99, 50cl bottle, Cambridge Wine Merchants, 01223-568989, www.cambridgewine.com; Valvona & Crolla, 0131-556 6066, www.valvonacrolla.co.uk).

I like Vin Santo enormously. It's a guilty pleasure little bottles which cost the earth. However, this famous style of sweet wine from Tuscany varies enormously from manky, seaweedy, treacle-flavoured shockers all of the way up to this wine and my other favourite, Isole e Olena, which offer a unique and often unsurpassed sweet wine experience.

I occasionally open a bottle at dinner parties and sometimes sneakily serve it blind for travelling winemakers (who never get the chance to taste this nectar), but absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder in Vin Santo's case.

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My featured wine is, without doubt, the finest example of this dried grape' sweetie I have tasted in years. Winemaker Federico Giuntini Masseti conjures up heavenly wines.

His Chianti Rufina Riserva Bucerchiale is a phenomenal red often gaining stellar scores in my notes. But this 2006 vintage Vin Santo shot to 19.520 when I tasted it back in January.

After five years maturing in barrels, during which time the wine oxidises down to 20% of its initial yield, I will bet you've never tasted anything as noble or as multi-layered in the sweet wine world.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (www.matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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