Villa Sant'Anna

If the Tuscan tourist board chose Villa Sant'Anna to feature in their advertising, we wouldn't be at all surprised. An old azienda in the hills around Montepulciano, it epitomises the idyll of food, olive oil and wine. Just 12ha are dedicated to grapes here - the majority of the land grows fruit and vegetables - and Simona Ruggeri and her daughters Anna and Margharita do all the work in the vines and cellar - ably supported by Maxi the Labrador.

Simona didn't make wine at all until 1989, preferring to sell the grapes. Having decided to try her hand at winemaking, she has spent the last twenty years perfecting her craft. New vineyards have been purchased in both the Colli Senesi and Vino Nobile de Montepulicano zones and the Ruggeris follow traditional Tuscan methods of viticulture and vinification: guyot training, low yields, hand harvesting and moderate use of French oak. The results are textbook examples of the appellations: bright and perfumed with purity of fruit and food-friendly structure. Wines for the dinner table.