Category Archives: Articles

Articles

© 2023 . All rights reserved.

Pieropan

Great tasting with Andrea Pieropan (and his 13 year old son in the background) of their remarkable @pieropanwines single vineyard #calvarino #soave showcasing its incredible capacity to age and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first release of this wine in 1971. This was a … Continue reading

© 2023 . All rights reserved.

Villa Raiano

Brief visit to @villaraiano last week and their beautiful winery. I was accompanied by my kind host, Brunella and their beautiful #bovaroodibernaese Bernese Mountain dog, Raia# who insisted on accompanying us despite the warm weather. The power and gentleness of animals warms the soul. … Continue reading

© 2021 . All rights reserved.

Simone Santini, Tenute Le Calcinaie, Vernaccia di San Gimignano DOCG 2020

The 2020 is another example of Simone Santini’s beautifully pure, focused and elegant style of Vernaccia di San Gimignano. Delicate aromas and flavours of white flowers, honeysuckle and green apple drift across the nose and palate. It is soft and … Continue reading

Valpolicella © 2016 . All rights reserved.

Anteprima Amarone

Valpolicella is a wine region we all think we know. Many of us may have cut our teeth on this light, fruity red when we first began to drink wine, but, like in many great wine regions, nothing stands still. I discovered there is always something more to learn on my first trip of 2016 when I attended the 13th edition of Anteprima Amarone. This is the big showcase event where the newly-released Valpolicella Amarone wines are first shown to the press at the end of January; it is held in the beautiful city of Verona in the Veneto. Continue reading

Looking out over the borders between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, near Trieste © 2014 . All rights reserved.

Wine Without Borders

After the Second World War, an interim Yugoslav-Italian border was drawn up by the Allied Forces and then re-drawn again by the Allies and Tito in 1947 when he established a unified Yugoslavia. Almost overnight, extended families found themselves separated by a border with wine producers having some of their vineyards in Italy while their homes were in Yugoslavia, now Slovenia. Continue reading

Lanzarote vineyard © 2014 . All rights reserved.

Malvasia Volcánica!

I had a very different idea of Malvasia before I visited Lanzarote. My first impressions were of a variety that was round, fat and simple – a little oily perhaps with low aromatics. Several examples that I tasted from warm areas in the South of France seemed to confirm that description and it wasn’t a grape variety I sought out much. Continue reading

Fabio Sireci © 2012 . All rights reserved.

Feudo Montoni

Occasionally, when you visit a vineyard and a producer, in whatever troubled, busy or preoccupied state of mind you happen to be in, you are stopped in your tracks and transformed by something almost spiritual in the place and the people. So it was with Feudo Montoni and our meeting with its delightful owner, Fabio Sireci. Continue reading