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When you’re in the mood for:
A savoury red • Lots going on, no heavy lifting • Food’s gone freelance
Tuscan-ish is our Heathcote, no-vintage, Sangiovese-led rule-bender: roughly 60% Sangiovese, 30% Piedirosso and 10% Petit Verdot, from three Heathcote growers across two seasons.
The Sangiovese and Petit Verdot came from 2024; the Piedirosso joined the table from 2025. Not exactly traditional. Which is sort of the point.
Not Tuscan. Not pretending to be. The “-ish” is doing a lot of honest work here.
And yes, Piedirosso is probably the “wait, what grape?” part of the blend. It’s a southern Italian red variety, and this was our first time having a proper play with it. Turns out, it made a very useful dinner guest: bright, lifted and just a bit unexpected.
In the glass, Tuscan-ish sits in the tart-cherry, redcurrant and savoury-spice lane. It’s not a big dark-fruit red; it’s more lifted, more food-friendly, and more interested in the dinner table than the trophy cabinet. Sangiovese brings the tart cherry and savoury backbone, Piedirosso adds lift and brightness, and Petit Verdot brings just enough structure to hold the conversation together.
There’s a mix of oak stories in the background — a light touch on the Sangiovese, none on the Piedirosso, and some barrel-aged shape from the Petit Verdot — but this is not an oak show. It’s savoury, lifted and very much its own thing.
This blend definitely wasn’t on the original whiteboard.
Tuscan-ish came from the practical end of winemaking: tasting, bench trials, and working with the wine you actually have — not the wine you optimistically imagined several months earlier.
The Sangiovese was the starting point. It had the tart cherry, red fruit, spice and Italian-ish backbone we wanted, but on its own it sat a little broad. The Piedirosso came from the opposite direction: lighter, brighter and more acid-led than expected. Neither wine was wrong, but neither had quite found its spot on its own.
The Piedirosso was the wild card. It’s not exactly a household name — unless your household has unusually niche dinner conversations — and it was the first time we’d worked with it. We expected something a little riper and rounder; what we got was much brighter, leaner and more acid-led. Annoying at first. Very handy later.
So rather than forcing the pieces into line with more additions, we put them on the bench together.
And that’s where it started to make sense. The Sangiovese gave the Piedirosso somewhere to sit. The Piedirosso gave the Sangiovese the lift it needed. Then a small amount of barrel-aged Petit Verdot came in and did exactly what Petit Verdot is good at: adding colour, shape and backbone without taking over the lighter, savoury red style.
It wasn’t a grand Tuscan masterplan. More like seating three unlikely dinner guests together and realising they had chemistry.
That’s the bit I love about blending. Sometimes balance comes less from additions, more from introductions.
The final blend is roughly 60% Sangiovese, 30% Piedirosso and 10% Petit Verdot, all Heathcote fruit, across the 2024 and 2025 seasons. It’s not a classic Tuscan blend. It’s not trying to be. But it lands in that tart-cherry, savoury, food-friendly space that made the name stick.
Not quite Tuscan. Definitely Heathcote. Tuscan-ish.
