Tuscany Supper Club: With Ruffino Wines

Fifteen seats, one long table, and a producer that has been making Tuscan wine since 1877. Ruffino is one of the older names in Chianti Classico — seven estates across Tuscany now, from Santedame and Gretole in the Chianti hills to Greppone Mazzi in Montalcino — and this supper is built around drinking those wines the way they were designed to be drunk. With food. Slowly.

Tuscan wine makes very little sense in isolation. Sangiovese is a grape of high acidity and firm, faintly grippy tannin: bracing on its own, transformed the moment fat and salt turn up. Put a Chianti Classico Riserva next to something roasted and you understand immediately why the region eats the way it does. That's the argument of the evening, made across several courses and several glasses rather than explained at you.

You'll taste through a run of Ruffino wines with a host who knows them properly — what separates a straight Chianti Classico from a Riserva, what the Riserva Ducale bottling has meant to the house for the best part of a century, and how the cooler hillside sites read against the warmer ones.

It's a sociable format, not a lecture. Come on your own and you'll leave having met people. Come as a pair and you'll still end up talking to the rest of the table.

Good to Know

£95 a seat, fifteen places only. Dietary requirements can be worked around with notice — tell us when you book. Menu, timings and address are confirmed ahead of the evening.