During my vinous upbringing, Tuscany always constituted one of the important pillars. It still does, however, with all of the exciting wines from all corners of the globe, I wasn´t particularly active in tasting the recent vintages. Although I have to confess that all the wines I had from the compelling 2021 vintage, more or less blew me away – beautifully balanced, pure, distinctly Tuscan but with more polish and purity than ever. Tignanello had its ups and downs to me, as I just thought it was a bit old-fashioned and somewhat mainstream in periods. Yet tasting this is just sheer pleasure, and I had to crack one bottle open before putting the others in the cellar. An abundance of black cherry, cassis, fine leather, fine tobacco, fine oak, and fine spices (yes, I do overuse the word fine here), yet that somewhat emphasizes the style, god dammit! Structured and powerful with no hard edges, silky tannin, and usually present acidity, giving lift with a very long finish. The food? Well, speaking about abundance, I certainly got an abundance of them, and especially ceps. A very simple plate consisting of Swedish rapeseed-fed Pork with truffle butter and a pasta with creamed ceps. Not fancy, utterly rustic, no flowers or herbs on top, but my god those flavours… freaking delicious in explicit language!