If you spend a week in Tuscany in the winter, it is inevitable that you will be served ribollita, and if you ordered it each day of your stay, you would likely taste seven different versions of the hearty, bone-warming, vegetable-rich soup. Despite the same core ingredients of cannellini beans, carrots, kale, tomatoes, bread, and olive oil, there are as many variations of the dish as there are Tuscan nonne (grandmothers).
     Elena Lapini, of Podere Campriano in Greve in Chianti, uses her own grandmother’s recipe, a two-day process that was historically prepared for Friday, when Catholics abstained from eating meat. The pot’s contents would then be reboiled—“ribollita”—for meals in the ensuing days. As you might imagine, this was a staple of the region’s cucina povera* for centuries.
     It turns out that ribollita is the perfect culinary canvas against which to appreciate the wide range of expressions possible in Tuscan reds. Across the Sangioveses in this pack, you will taste a diversity of styles, including three reds from the Chianti region: Villa di Geggiano’s “Bandinello”—mostly Sangiovese with a splash of Ciliegiolo and Syrah—Castagnoli’s Chianti Classico, and Campriano’s Alta Valle della Greve. From Montalcino, south of Siena, Sesti’s Rosso di Montalcino is a great example of an elegant style of Sangiovese whereas Podere Sante Marie’s has more rustic charm. These five bottlings reflect the grape’s mesmerizing array of possible flavors, from succulent cherries and pomegranate to mint, balsamic notes, and even the umami of roasted tomato. The lone Pinot Nero in this sampler comes not from the land of Sangiovese—south of Florence—but from the easternmost slice of Tuscany, in the cooler foothills of the Apennines, and it provides a thrilling contrast to the other wines here.
     If you are like me, you will make this soup over and over again when the temperature drops. I recommend trying Elena’s recipe (found here), as well as several others you can find through a simple online search (and most of which are ready to eat in an hour or less, not the next day). Whenever you do, open a bottle or two of the wines included in this sampler and you will experience an unbeatable marriage of Tuscan food and wine.

* Cucina povera refers to the simple, use-everything, peasant-cooking traditions of rural Italy.