Wine Pick Of The Week: 2004 Il Volano Tuscan Red ($15)

If one place in the world could lure me to the idyllic life of a gentleman wine grower, it's the craggy hills of Chianti between Florence and Siena in the Tuscan countryside. The region is just as it was half a millennium ago: olive groves and vineyards, sturdy stone buildings, movie-set-perfect villages connected by a primitive network of roads as convoluted as a bowl of spaghetti. One thing is very different, though: The hills are lousy with feral Americans and Brits, so many Brits, in fact, that the place is often called Chiantishire.

So now you have to be rich to buy into this lifestyle, and not just a little rich. American entrepreneur Frank Grace was just rich enough in 1995 when he bought about 65 acres near the village of Panzano with the idea to make wine and olive oil. There was no winery on the property but there was a working 19th-century windmill (molino) perched upon a stone tower. So Grace and his business partner built a small but efficient cantina across the road from the windmill and within a very short time he was impressing the international wine press as well as the locals with the quality and style of his wines. I visited the estate on a tip from a local industry insider when only a couple of wines had been released (the first was in '99) and none yet in the U.S. I admired the way Grace approached the project. He wanted his wines to respect the traditions and style of the place where the grapes were grown. He also wanted to achieve a certain quality level by introducing new technologies into the grape growing and winemaking processes. All the Il Molino de Grace wines I have tasted are spot on.

The 2004 Il Volano is a good entry-level wine from this winery. It is modern in the way it is ripe and full, drenched with sweet red and black fruit that recall cherries and plums. Yet there are familiar earthy aromas and flavors showing that make it taste a little bit like Tuscany. To find the wine, contact Unique Wine Co. at 425-255-8646.

-- Richard Kinssies