SAN MICHELE VERDICCHIO CAPOVOLTO 2020

Simply one of the best wines from its region, the vineyards in San Michele are all organic and produce white wines of purity, energy and utter drinking pleasure. This was the first wine from the estate and though it shows how fine and serious this style can be, it manages to be charming and full of grapefruit minerality, red apples and cashew nuts.

It's just one of a raft of wonderful new Italian wineries taking white wines to a new quality level, eschewing the thin and water-like wines for quaffing at the table, where they were traditionally mixed with water to achieve two things: reduce the alcohol in the wines and to let the alcohol kill off the germs in the water. But in the last two to three decades, producers are looking to cooler site, mountainous regions and some of the techniques of their ancestors to make racy, elegant and profound wines that represent their terroirs. This is one such producer and Verdicchio is certainly one of the grapes that is playing a part in the reinvention of white wine in Italy.

Based between the Adriatic sea and the Apennines, the vineyards benefit from sea breezes, altitude and, in certain cases, the southern exposure to the sun. The vineyards are all organic and the estate uses almost no sulphur in the winery. This crystal vision of the land and grape has given them a very fine reputation indeed.

Run by Alessandro, Beatrice and Daniela, I first came across the wines when ex-Dubliner Daniela was first looking for an importer for her wines into Ireland. She had been living in the city a few years earlier and came to us to see what we thought. This was the wine she showed as it had just won three glasses in Gambero Rosso: I was hooked and though I would have loved to have had the wines in the country for myself, I realised that they deserved a better and bigger exposure, so we chatted away and recommended a friend... the rest is history. Still charming, full of life and infectious enthusiasm, like her wines, Daniela's story goes from strength to strength.