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ah dindeed, Scansano and Monte Argentario are about as close to Rome as they are to Florence. Romans love to go on holiday in the Maremma, the closest coast to the capital where you can find unspoilt beaches; a Roman friend of mine based in London drives out there with her family every summer, not just for a bucket and spade holiday, but to pick up half a dozen cases of her favourite wine – Morellino di Scansano, of course. When I first discovered morellino you could buy a decent example from my local supermarket (Tesco, as it happens).


Now some annoying calculation involving name recognition – ah how different if morellino were rechristened something as short as Gavi – and price points means that the supermarkets have given up on it. Morellino is not quite as inexpensive as it used to be, and I suppose it is the kind of wine that benefits from having an enthusiastic person in a shop to talk it up – a perfect opportunity for independent wine merchants. I think of it as a simple wine, but if you look at the label of a bottle of Morellino di Scansano, you’ll see that it is not just a DOC (denominazione di origine controllata) but a DOCG (denominazione di origine controllata e garantita), the highest category for Italian wines. How seriously should morellino be taken, both by makers and drinkers? There are two related issues: ageing (and in particular the riserva category for aged morellino


and the question of oak. In Italy morellino tends to get drunk very young indeed – by which I mean at just over one year old, when the freshness and intensity of perfume are strongest, but there can still be some quite raw tannins. For the British taste that’s too young – but you still want a dash of freshness in your morellino. “It’s really, really good glugging wine,” Patrick Sandeman of Lea and Sandeman puts it, while we taste his excellent Morellino di Scansano “Heba” 2009 from Fattoria di Magliano in the shop in Kensington Church Street. There’s the deep, black cherry nose with just a hint of violets, the open generous fruit, sweetness trouncing the hint of sourness you always get with sangiovese – helped here with 15% syrah.

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