Wine
These symbols are the keys to the new Slow Wine guide – finally published in English this month. For those of you wondering if this is related to Slow Food: yes. The Snail is the Slow Food International symbol; for Slow Wine it indicates a winery that embodies the Slow Food sensibilities including “sensorial, territorial, [...]
Continue reading about The Snail, the Bottle and the Coin: Slow Wine
For me, it’s fascinating to see a wineglass, a decanter, a wine bottle that sat on a dining table hundreds of years ago. It might be plain and thick and unevenly shaped. It might be thin and delicate and rimmed with gold. At the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, I was fascinated [...]
One of my favorite things about Bertani, the Amarone producer, is that they make available their vintage Amarones from just about any year in the last half-century. Anyone can order one through the distributor, and the prices are in the $$ hundreds, not $$$ thousands – great for celebrating special occasions. Recently, soft-spoken Bertani winemaker [...]
Continue reading about Amarone from any year? How about 1980!
Having just returned from the annual Sicilia en primeur event, I find myself swimming in impressions about what’s happening on this island. Or is it a continent on its own? The further from the mainland you get, the more you feel you’re on a separate continent, a crosswind of cultures set out in the Mediterranean [...]
Continue reading about Two Sicilies – Wines from Etna and Ragusa
Listening to people making plans for Vinitaly – the frighteningly large, annual Italian wine fair in Verona — reminds me that I met the organizers, CEO Giovanni Mantovani and Stevie Kim in New York this winter. Along with Cristina Mariani-May of Banfi and Marilisa Allegrini of Allegrini Wines, they co-hosted fundraising events that culminated in [...]
Continue reading about Vinitaly, NASDAQ, Banfi, Allegrini — and me
What’s going on in Burgundy right now? Here’s a photo Alex Gambal sent of the first day’s work in one of his newly-acquired vineyards – in the areas of Batard-Montrachet, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet. He also bought a house “on the square in Santenay that will be turned into a guest and rental residence.” Hoping it’s [...]
More about Nuovo Realta, the new winery group in Piedmont, mainly family-owned small wineries, but with ambitious plans for expansion. You’ll be hearing more about these wineries, so here are their names: Brjnda, F.lli Manzone, La Fusina, La Bruciata, Voghera, and Caldera. Recently, I traveled to Piedmont and met the producers, and learned about the [...]
Continue reading about Nuovo Realta teaches Piedmont terroir and history
First Step: Do you like the wine that’s in your mouth?
Continue reading about Fear of Wine — simple steps to make it go away
A vertical vineyard, that’s intriguing. 55 degree slopes, it says on the label. The wines were velvety, rich and smooth. I was reminded of the day some years ago when I wound my way up to Pride Winery on the cusp of a mountain — and discovered boutique-quality wines at far less than Screaming Eagle [...]
