Steven Spurrier’s wines of the month – July

Decanter’s long-standing consultant editor and 2017 Decanter Hall of Fame Award recipient picks fine wines to drink now and others to lay down, all priced from £25 upwards...

From the cellar

Petrolo, Galatrona 2006

From a hilly estate in the Colli Aretini, the southeastern part of the Chianti Classico region that was delimited in 1716 by Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici as one of Tuscany’s best four wine-producing zones. Luca Sanjust produces wines with great vigour and depth that repay long ageing. His Torrione cuvée, named after the tower standing on top of Roman foundations (the only other one remaining in Tuscany being at Castello di Argiano near Montalcino), is a Sangiovese-Merlot- Cabernet blend, while his Campo Lusso is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, and the flagship Petrolo, Galatrona is 100% Merlot, from the DOC of Valdarno di Sopra. A bottle of this latter wine, from the 2006 vintage, and a present to me from Sanjust, stood out among 11 other very fine Italian reds at a recent dinner at 67 Pall Mall private members club in London. Ten hectares of old, low-yielding Merlot planted at 300m on a loam, clay, shale and sandstone soil have produced a very full-bodied wine – rich and still amazingly youthful in its second decade, approachable now, but another five years will express elegance alongside the natural power and keep it evolving for a further decade. One of the most awarded wines in Italy, Galatrona sells out on release (£125, $150).

For the cellar

Ridge, Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2016

Ridge Vineyards in California and visionary winemaker Paul Draper (Decanter Hall of Fame Award 2000 winner) need no introduction, and neither does the famed Monte Bello vineyard – first planted in 1886 but left abandoned by the early 1940s to be replanted a little later, the Cabernet Sauvignon vines now more than 65 years old. Research and tasting in the new millennium showed that certain blocks consistently produced a more accessible wine that developed Monte Bello’s full complexity earlier, and from 2008 these were combined under the Santa Cruz Mountains Estate Cabernet label, stressing the principal variety and the Monte Bello estate vineyard as its source. The 2016 vintage of this ‘baby Monte Bello’ is a blend of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc from the more vigorous, lower slopes of the mountain vineyard. It reveals a really lovely fragrance of red and black fruit on the nose that continues on the palate – supple, juicy yet still reserved, the wine is all there waiting to fully open up from 2020, with a decade in front of it. Ageing for 17 months in air-dried American oak, only 35% new, has enhanced the natural fruit, while minimum filtration preserves the wine in the bottle. Available from £67.50 / $80.

The Spurrier Selection