Category Archives: Wine Trips

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Verduno #1

After a long journey it’s fun to walk in the vineyards with expert @edmondobonelli – you never know who you will meet 😉 first photo Vittore Alessandria @fratellialessandria @edmondobonelli Diego Morra @cantinemorradiego President of the Verduno Producers Association and @ian_dagata in @fratellialessandria vineyards. Last photo of #verduno town on a little high crest … 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

En route to Cafayate © 2011 . All rights reserved.

Travels In Argentina

We finally arrived at the pretty, white colonial building of El Esteco – a little oasis in a beautiful valley, surrounded by two dramatic mountain ranges. There was a lovely feeling of calm and the heady scent of orange blossom filled the air, wafted from the beautiful series of courtyards and gardens that make up the grounds of the hotel… Continue reading