This one came from out of left field: an entry-level Tuscan red still enjoyable over ten years after the vintage. Ideal pizza-pasta wine, especially at this price.
Thick blackberry and plum soaked in oak, from a lesser known region in Spain. La Mancha stretches from the mountains of Toledo to the western spurs of the Cuenca hills, east of the Balearic Sea. The name is thought to have come from an Arabic word المنشأ al-mansha, meaning "land without water" which describes the region's dryland farming soils.