Until I drank my way through an edifying class on Italian wine at my local wine bar Vino Rosso, I thought I knew all about Montepulciano. But I was oh, so wrong.

Because I’d been there, I knew that Montepulciano is a town in Italy. It sits on the top of a hill in the southwestern corner of Tuscany, overlooking a sea of vines. Most of them yield a crunchy, thick-skinned black grape called prugnolo gentile, a name you don’t have to remember. Basically, prugnolo gentile is a special clone of sangiovese, the main grape of Tuscany, so most people just say say sangiovese. The top wine of the area is called Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, which you can think of as a Chianti only wiser with age, more long-lived, and more special.

If you think that’s all there is to know about Montepulciano, click here:

Turns out, just to confuse you, Montepulciano is also a grape variety, one of the more than 400 grown in Italy. We tasted a knock-out example from the Lazio region outside Rome, a 2005 “Zilath Rosso” from Casale Certo Corvi. It had a ruby color, with forward aromas of fruit, spice, and some smoke and cocoa. It was very spicy, with loads of red cherry and brambly, dusty notes. It had a clean, fresh finish. “Packs a lot of flavor for a light-to-medium bodied wine,” I said. It’s blended with some sangiovese and carignan, too.