Kaiton from Pliger and Montevertine

If I were being profligate with points in the last chance saloon both of these wines would hit the high 90s

Riesling Kaiton, Peter Pliger

And lo the root day flowered into a fruit day. The Riesling felt good for the screwcap gave a rifle crack of crisp certainty. This is normally a wine of searing rectitude, like crumbled stone shot through with a ray of shimmering acidity, but today it was more eloquent with intense flavours of white peach, orange peel and apricot, sharply focused and delineated, showing noteworthy verve, and although a strong sense of minerality underlay the honeyed finish there were also beautiful nuances of candied ginger and quince. Dolomite was right on the night.

Montevertine Rosso

... is gentle, silky and thoroghly seductive with velvety tannins to flesh out its finish.  It also has an ethereal bouquet of crushed red cherries and the wild scent of “sotto bosco”, the forest undergrowth with its hints of grilled mushroom and truffle and dried pine needles. There is the masculine and the feminine, the yin and the yang, of great wine to be found in this rendition which, for all its uniqueness, refers constantly to the profound traditions of this fine estate that has fought to preserve Sangiovese as the supreme grape of Tuscany.

The plum-coloured Montevertine has a soft and approachable nose, somehow warm and cool at the same time with blackberry and cherry fruit to the fore, the ripeness offset by cool earthiness, then we move effortlessly into a palate of a lovely mouth-filling wine with a bloody, baked-plum pie quality studded with cloves. There is tremendous clarity to the wine, an articulation of nuance – mingling dark berry fruit, dried cherry notes, smoke, gravel and paprika. Like all great wines it has integrity, purity and a thrilling edginess that keeps you drinking and thinking.