Santa & D’Sas …ish Dolcetto 2018

Dolcetto is an Italian grape variety that comes from Piedmont, the same part of Italy as the famed nebbiolo. It’s translation to ‘little sweet one’ can sit in contrast to a very dry nebbiolo with naturally high levels of tannin. But there’s no denying that in the right hands it makes exceptional food friendly wine.

Santa and D’Sas are the right hands. Those hands belong to Andrew Santarossa and Matthew Di Sciascio who established the label in 2013 after meeting during their wine studies.

There’s a lot going on here – ripe cherries, tender rhubarb and pink musk sticks plucked from the jar in a 1980s corner store. But it’s definitely not just ‘a little sweet one’. Savoury characters hint at delicious pairings – roast tomatoes, dried Italian herbs, a hint of spicy salami. It shows varietal slightly grippy tannins but they are well handled. 

Drink with a big wedge of crisp wood fired pizza, eaten with your hands.

Nicole Bilson

Wine Critic at Winepilot

Nicole loves wine. So much so that she gave up a successful career in Pharmacy, perfected her spitting technique, and moved from sunny Queensland to the wine-drenched laneways of Melbourne. Stints in hospitality, wineries, retail, sales and marketing filled the next few years while Nicole built her knowledge and searched for the right path. She completed the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) Diploma in 2016 and became a certified WSET Educator the following year. She now juggles a number of roles including teaching people about wine, curating wines lists for restaurants and bars, judging in Australian wine shows and, of course, writing. In 2016 she won the Negociants Working With Wine writing award and has since contributed to Gourmet Traveller WINE, Halliday Wine Companion Magazine and Nourish Magazine.

Wine tasting