Sangiovese takes its name from sanguis Jovis, the blood of Jupiter, which is a large claim for a grape that shows up in the glass as pale, translucent ruby. The name points at temperament rather than color: this is a grape defined by acid and grip, not by depth or richness, and it has shaped Italian food and Italian wine together for centuries because of it.

The flavor profile runs medium-bodied, high in acidity, with firm, dusty tannin underneath. Sour cherry and red plum sit at the center, layered with dried herb, a savory tomato-leaf note, and leather that deepens with age. Little about it reads as lush. All of it reads as precise.

Sangiovese completes a trio readers have now met across three weeks of Italian reds. Corvina, in Valpolicella and Amarone, concentrates itself by drying. Nebbiolo, in Barolo, builds ferocious structure from almost no color at all. Sangiovese does something plainer and in some ways more useful: it simply carries enough acid to survive contact with tomato, which is the single most common sauce on an Italian table.

Sangiovese's most traditional home is Chianti Classico, but the grape also produces Brunello di Montalcino, a slower, more structured expression grown from a specific Sangiovese clone and aged for years before release. Where Chianti Classico is built for a weeknight table, Brunello is built for the cellar. Both start from the same grape, on the same principle of acid over weight.

The Super Tuscan

In the 1970s, a group of Tuscan producers began blending Sangiovese with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the same two grapes readers have already met in Bordeaux and in Napa Valley, and aging the results in small French oak barrels rather than the large, neutral casks Chianti law required. Because the blends broke with tradition, Italian law classified them at its lowest tier, Vino da Tavola, simply table wine. The wines sold for prices well above that label anyway, and the category eventually earned its own designation, IGT Toscana.

The result sits at an angle to everything else this week: rounder, riper, more overtly powerful than Chianti Classico, closer in feel to the Napa Cabernets of Week 22 than to its own Tuscan neighbors. It is the week's bolder second wine, worth knowing about even where the primary teaching stays with Chianti Classico and the tomato.

READ NEXT IN THIS WEEK'S WINE PATH

→ Thursday: Pasta al Pomodoro, where Sangiovese's acid finally meets its match on the plate.