Pithy, grapey and energetic, right from the nose. Tobacco, thyme, dried rosemary and red cherry fruit. This almost tastes like a tank sample, so visceral and punchy is it. The oak, a directive signpost, rather than a traffic warning. Effusive and punchy across the finish. Good wine. Drink or hold.

The Villa Raiano 2018 Irpinia Campi Taurasini Costa Baiano (with exactly 10,210 bottles produced) shows an especially dusty or fine-grained quality that applies to both the aromas and the palate. It gives the wine an especially elegant feel but also an accessible personality that should bring it up to the 10-year mark but not likely more. Candied cherry, red plum, tobacco and wild rose are steady background tones. You get great value here.

The Villa Raiano 2017 Irpinia Campi Taurasini Costa Baiano is an affordable and accessible red wine to pair with a hearty home-cooked meal of burgers or meatloaf. The wine shows abundant fruit with blackberry, plum, toasted rosemary and baked earth. Aging happens in cement vats and terracotta amphorae and lasts up to 12 months. Production is 9,000 bottles.

This wine unfolds in a steady manner imparting black fruit flavors with lots of dark spice, tobacco, tar and resin. This is an easy-drinking effort with good acidity and tension at the back. Drink the 2016 Irpinia Campi Taurasini Costa Baiano with pork or lamb chops and a side of oven-roasted potatoes. Some 6,500 bottles were made.