Sesti’s Rosso di Montalcino is a wonderfully food-friendly Sangiovese. It oozes with quality and pedigree. 

Another perfect WW house wine, albeit when you have people around you want to impress, it offers up sweet cherry, tangy raspberry, blood orange, thyme, rose petal and exotic spices like nutmeg and star anise.

Guiseppe Sesti, having studied music and astronomy in Venice, had never planned to go into the wine business. Guigi, as he is known, met his now wife in North Wales while writing the first of his five-or-so books on astronomy.

The family moved to Tuscan in the 1970s and he bought a ruined castle on a hill – presumably a great place for a telescope – and an abandoned hamlet called Argiano. Between writing about the stars and organising the festival of Baroque Opera in Tuscany, he began to visit local wineries. His passion grew and in the 1990s the Sesti family planted their first vineyards. Guiseppe’s four children helped to harvest and stomp the first vintages, and over time his love of ancient calendars and celestial spheres has taken Sesti down the path of biodynamic production following lunar cycles.

The eco-friendly estate contains vineyards, olive groves, animal grazing and woodlands spanning 102 hectares, so Guigi enlisted the help of his daughter Elisa. Ellie, as she goes by, was born in Tuscany, so has wine in her blood. She studied theatre design and classical architecture; so, like her father, brings a certain amount of artistry to the winemaking. Together they run what is considered by many to be one of the leading wineries in the region.