Italy: Beyond the Classics Tasting Kit

This brilliantly straddles the line between white and orange wine. With only 24 hours of skin contact and concrete ageing, there is a golden hue, and textural grip. With citrus peel and salted lemons on the nose, developing tart peach and sage on the palate, there is lovely juicy acidity.

This really stood out in a recent tasting as a savoury, characterful white with real presence from Le Marche. A blend of 90% verdicchio and 10% chardonnay, fermented with wild yeasts, it is weighty yet fresh, layering ripe apricot and sweet orange with citrus peel and a gentle herbal note of thyme. A salty, lightly oily texture adds depth, carrying the flavours through to a long, mouthwatering finish.

A Sicilian blend of 60% moscato di Alessandria with 40% albanello, this is fermented in concrete tanks with 15 days on the skins, extracting beautifully expressive aromas of honeysuckle and orange blossom and gentle tannins. Bottled unfined and unfiltered, this is pale amber in colour with a gentle, natural haze. A lovely and easy introduction to 'orange' wine, with refreshing acidity, ripe citrus zest flavours, and a grapefruit pith finish.

Arianna Occhipinti is making some of Sicily's most talked-about wines and a single sip of her joyful 'SP68' Rosso 2024 instantly explains why. This bright and lively medium-bodied red is typical of her hands-off style and is brim-full of character. A blend of 70% frappato and 30% nero d'Avola is fermented in large concrete tanks, with a small proportion of whole bunch inclusion which brings spicy fragrance to the wild berry fruit. With dark berry, brambly character as well as the usual red cherry, and gorgeous richness in spite of the modest alcohol.

Wine-critic turned winery-owner Giorgio Melandri was keen to explore Romagna's marl and sandstone foothills for production of elegant sangiovese and has built a reputation for modern, lifted, and very fine examples which appeal to pinot noir lovers. In May 2023, extensive flooding in Modigliana led to many landslides which swept away roads and made it impossible to reach the vineyards unless on foot. Production was more than halved and thus, instead of producing his usual three sangioveses with grapes from the individual valleys, the decision was taken to produce a single Modigliana from the very best fruit harvested. The result – I Ronchi Sparsi – is an incredibly characterful, refreshing red perfumed with wild strawberry, pomegranate, Alpine herbs and roses. Crisp with a tangy edge to the fruit, and finely detailed tannins, this is a triumph from adversity.

The Perego family has been growing grapes on the granite terraces of Valtellina in Lombardy since 1860. From nebbiolo vines - known as chiavennasca in the region - which are more than 50-years' old, this has brilliant, bracing acidity, and real purity of sour-cherry fruit. Suffused with classic nebbiolo rose-petal perfume and aromas of alpine herbs, the tannins are graceful having been gently integrated through time in large old chestnut casks before bottling.