Writing about the wines of Piemonte, Italy and France
The wines of Friuli/ Friuli Venezia Giulia
It was great to be able to taste the wines of a larger Friulian company, based in Friuli Grave. Normally all the spotlight is on Collio and Friuli Collio Orientali, rather than on the flatter plain normally associated with volume production and Glera for Prosecco. The winery Piera 1899 produces a number of lines but
Update: in January 2023, I added additional material on the hectares of the top varieties in Friuli as a whole and in Friuli Collio Orientali, Collio’s neighbour. Collio DOC is a small but high quality denomination in Friuli Venezia Giulia, 130 kilometres north-east of Venice. It was the first Italian region to make fresh, clean
Collio DOC: quality wines, styles, challenges Read More »
The November ‘bring any bottle you like’ version of Overton’s blind tasting group produced three categories of wines – bankers (wines you had a chance of spotting), ‘on a good day’ (if the force is with you) and ‘you have got to be joking’. Plus one in the ‘mission impossible’ class as well. Most quality
Bankers to the impossible Read More »
Janet and I have been meaning to go to L’Ortolan, the Michelin-starred restaurant near Reading, for longer than I can remember, a couple of decades perhaps. It sprang to fame as John Burton-Race’s place (long before celebrity beckoned) but today it is in the talented hands of Alan Murchison. Janet tried to book online for
Gravner’s orange wine at L’Ortolan Read More »
It is a great moment when a book is published which genuinely marks a substantive change in our knowledge. For decades, wine people have been dependent on Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson’s The world atlas of wine and the same team’s Oxford companion to wine as their basic reference books. Oz Clarke and Margaret Rand
Rare Italian varieties Read More »
November’s Bring a Bottle Club was a somewhat random affair – two French classics (Sancerre and a Loire Cabernet Franc), some good regionally important wines (Friulano from Friuli, Grenache from Roussillon, Treixadura from Ribeiro, a Xarel-lo/ Riesling blend from Penedes) and a brace of New World wines (Californian Merlot, White Bordeaux blend from the Cape).
Classic, regional, new world? Read More »
Andover Wine Friends’ March tasting was designed to have some fun while tasting a range of sparkling wines blind. It certainly achieved the first aim. The blind tasting part showed some the difficulties of this game all too clearly: 1. Sparkling pink wines don’t give a lot away Apart from an occasional difference in colour
Sparkling wine in the dark Read More »
Decanter’s Friuli day featured both a master class by Peter McCombie MW and the chance to taste a large range of wines from about 30 producers from this most northeasterly region of Italy. This was a good complement to our recent Mario Schiopetto tasting which showed how house style is important as grape variety. Peter,
Friuli in overview Read More »
With a theme as big as North Italy, the Overton blind tasting group, where each member brings one or more bottles without much conferring, could have been very wide-ranging. We had a fairly representative sample, though no sparkling wine (Prosecco, Franciacorta, Asti) and one obvious classic missing – Amarone della Valpolicella. The selection was stronger
North Italian tour Read More »
When we think of Italian wine, we have established regions in mind – Valpolicella, Soave or Sicily if we are stood in front of a supermarket shelf, Barolo, Montalcino or Montepulciano, perhaps, if we are talking to a specialist wine merchant. In these contexts it is inevitably the regions which produce high volume at low