Simple fare, but decent enough to wash down our fried seafood antipasti. It had an interesting nose, with sweet apples, cream and yeast, some wafting flower scents. A long way away from Champagne in spite of a traitional cepage of chard and two the pinots. The palate was not great, but not undrinkable either, a bit on the thin, slightly tart side at the very edges, but there were otherwise pretty pleasing flavours of apple, pear and flowers. All in all, a pretty forgettable starter, but it served its purpose.

I thought this was really nice. I loved the classic Chianti nose here, with dusty earth and leather, slightly horsey, barnyardy notes and a lovely bit of dusky dark cherries and black berries. With time, the savoury, slightly Bretty notes receded slightly to show scents of dried flowers and spice in the background. Lovely, masculine stuff. The palate was really fresh for a 1997, without the heavy, roasted fruits that you sometimes get from the vintage. Instead, there were juicy gobs of dark cherries, black plums and blackberries touched with fine tannins at the midpalate and bits of spice and savoury meat, leather and mushrooms and a damp woody linger towards the slightly shortish finish. Very nice apart from the lack of length. As would be expected, this went great with pizza. A really nice wine at a very nice place now.

10 years old and still far too young - this was a really solid Aglianico though. It had a beautiful floral nose, with dark flower petals floating around a core of deep, black fruited aromas spiked with some earthy, metally, minerally notes. After all those floral notes, the palate was rather bigger and richer than I thought it would be, with a great depth of slightly jammy black fruit surrounded by the familiar halo of flowers. A bit tight at first, but some time in the glass allowed the finish to unwind in a lovely ring of stony minerality. Still really grippy and very fresh in spite of its big fruited midpalate, this needs a lot of time yet. I enjoyed it though - a nice wine capable of much improvement given another 6-7 years in the bottle, and I suspect it will last for far longer than that.