Writing about the wines of Piemonte, Italy and France
The wines of Sardinia/Sardegna
Taking the temperature of Italian wine: VinoVIP July 2017 Recently I was a guest of the Italian wine magazine, Civiltà del Bere (English website here), at VinoVIP 2017, held in spectacular Cortina d’Ampezzo, high in the Dolomites. You can see my pictures of Cortina here. I contributed to a session on Communicating Complexity (of
Taking the temperature of Italian wine 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 »
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
One of the endearing features of tasting wines in situ is discovering the range of wines produced. Most areas will have a wine style that they do really well, occasionally outstandingly. But alongside those wines will be competent wines, sometimes from local grape varieties, sometimes from the well-travelled international brigade. The Tuscan white Vermentino would
The good and the great Read More »