After the exhilaration of hearing that the Classic Wine Library has agreed to publish my book on The Wines of Piemonte, what’s next? First, just revel in that sentence! And then over the next months and years, I can focus on one great Italian region and get into it in real depth. There is always a story behind the famous – and not so famous – wineries of a region and it’s now my job to go and find those stories and write them up.  

OneNote (powerful note app with a great search feature) and Trello (beautifully simple app that helps to organise projects). Setting these up and trying to get to grips with OneNote and Trello have taken a whole weekend and then much of the following week.  IT is supposed to make your life simpler, though often not in the short term! 

But there are so many other things to do: 

• communicate the news to friends, colleagues, contacts in Piemonte and close contacts in other Italian regions – I will need their help! 
• find out what the key events are in Piemonte (e.g. tastings when the new vintages are released) and get myself to them 
• plan a campaign of visits to the various parts of the region
• buy a representative selection of wines available in the UK and from Italy to deepen my understanding of the basic styles (tough work but someone has to do it) 
• make contact with the consortiums (the bodies that represent all the wineries in an appellation) to see if they will support my work 
• and, in the medium term, find my own voice to write this book, combining depth of research with an accessible and readable style
• and lots more … 

It’s all a bit overwhelming.