Vigorello Toscana IGT

Producer history

Agricola San Felice is based at Castelnuovo Berardenga at the southern edge of Chianti Classico, with 140 hectares of vineyard alongside a cellar, some 17,000 olive trees and a hotel complex. Vigorello is the estate's landmark wine: first made in 1968, it was the first Super Tuscan produced in the Chianti Classico region, and it was radical at the time for being made solely from red grapes, as a 100% Sangiovese, at a period when local rules expected white grapes in the blend. Its composition has been reworked repeatedly since — Cabernet Sauvignon joined in 1979, Merlot in 2001, and by 2011 Sangiovese had been removed altogether and Pugnitello introduced. That native grape came out of the Vitiarium, the experimental vineyard San Felice developed with the Universities of Florence and Pisa in the 1980s to study and preserve indigenous varieties, work that has continued for over thirty years. Leonardo Bellaccini is the estate's winemaker, responsible for a widely awarded portfolio built on Sangiovese.

Signature pairings

• Wild boar ragù with pappardelle — A gamey, long-cooked ragù matches the wine's barrique-derived structure, and the sauce's savoury depth suits a blend built on Pugnitello rather than on soft fruit.
• Peposo alla fornacina, Tuscan black-pepper beef stew — Coarse black pepper and slow-braised beef are a regional match for a tannic Tuscan red, and the wine's moderate 13% alcohol keeps the pepper from turning hot on the palate.
• Thai grilled beef salad (ยำเนื้อย่าง) — The charred beef and lime work with the wine's dark fruit and firm acidity, but this pairing only holds when the salad is made mild — the fresh chilli in a standard yam would clash with 24 months of barrique tannin.