I confess that my heart sinks a bit whenever I read the name of this grape variety on an American wine label because I've tasted one disappointment after another, but the Leonetti 2009 Sangiovese transported me smilingly straight to Tuscany before gently reminding me that it had a distinctly delicious personality, thank you, needing no Old World validation. (Its 8% Syrah component is not novel, though not all growers of Sangiovese would own up to that.) I don't think there is much mystery about what makes this wine so expressive and successful. Gentle fermentative extraction in open-top wooden uprights is followed by maturation in large ovals and demi-muids rather than barriques...and not too many of them new, either. This cepage had been in the Leonetti line-up since 1995, so when the decision was made to move into estate-bottling mode, a place was found for it both in the Seven Hills and Loess vineyards. Roasted chestnut, game, violet, and lightly-cooked cherry rise from the glass, then inform a palate whose sense of tannic grit is not at all coarse but sufficient to add invigoration and almost certainly enhance this wine's adaptability at table. While I strongly suspect that low-level brett is responsible for some of the personality on exhibit here - and in consequence I'd monitor stocks carefully if planning to cellar any - it, for now, in no way lacks for lip-smacking primary juiciness that extends all the way through a vibrant, saliva-liberating finish. And the liveliness here, incidentally, isn't on account of any acid adjustment (though Figgins did add tartaric to selected lots of Cabernet and Merlot in this vintage, as he says he typically will one year in three). "We love what Sangiovese does," says Gary Figgins, "but viticulturally it's a challenge. We found, for instance, that interior berries weren't getting good exposure, so now we go through right after bloom with a hair comb" to remove one third or more of the embryonic fruit within each cluster. Just shy of two decades on in the history of Walla Walla's first bonded winery and one of Washington State's greatest vinous success stories, pioneer Gary Figgins and his son Chris (who had just gotten his horticultural degree and joined the family business) embarked on a path of re-directing, indeed re-creating Leonetti Cellars as an estate bottler and farmer of the local terroir. In the summer of 1996, the Figginses became partners in the emerging Seven Hills Vineyard south of Walla Walla. The following winter, severe frost drastically cut their supply of fruit from established Yakima Valley vineyards, encouraging a decision to invest in sites of their own nearer home. Chris Figgins chose the spot that the following year became Mill Creek Upland Vineyard - then the rare instance of a family wheat farm for sale, and at a price that raised not just locals' eyebrows but ire; and in 2002 Loess Vineyard was planted 17 miles away and adjacent to the winery, with lay-out and clonal diversity predicated on the family's by then extensive experience at Seven Hills and Upland. (For an account of Chris Figgins's next expansionary step, see my coverage of Figgins Family Wine Estates in this report.) These three Leonetti estate vineyards offer a vivid example of Walla Walla microclimatic diversity (and that's without even venturing across the line into Oregon and the cobbles of Milton-Freewater or the as yet largely undeveloped higher Blue Mountain foothills), which make for a typically month-long harvest, not to mention for a corresponding diversity of raw materials from which to achieve wines of balance and complexity or - if desired - site-specificity. (Figgins gave me a chance in March to sample unblended lots from barrel that confirmed the striking differences of personality accruing to each site.) The younger Figgins officially took over as winemaker from his father in 2006, and even a very occasional taster of Leonetti wines - as I was until this year - could not fail