Beaumes de Venise and its neighbors – Lafare, La Roque-Alric, and Suzette – are Southern Rhône winemaking villages, a part of the Beaumes de Venise AOP (Appellation d'Origine Protégée). Here the landscape is shaped by the vineyards, which are grown in terraces stitched into the slopes and valleys of the
I spent most of my recent trip to Bologna learning about Lambrusco and Pignoletto: sparkling red and sparkling white. Good timing for the Holidays, right? Especially at prices under $20. Sparkling Red Wine Last month a group of sparkling wine producers in Italy held a pizza party. This might not
November can be quite agreeable in the Veneto countryside – if the temperature remains mild. A few weeks ago I was visiting a winery in the Treviso province, in Nervesa della Battaglia which is a village known for the bloody battle fought here in the First World War between the Italian
With the loss of Stanislao “Stanko” Radikon on September 11th 2016, the wine world lost one of its most dynamic pioneers. The news was announced to the world with a poignant message from his son Saša, on social media: “Tonight I missed a friend and collaborator. But most of all,
It isn’t difficult to imagine that a visitor to a Napa Valley tasting room in the late 1970s would see a much different world than exists today. There would no traffic jams along Highway 29, and no crowds queuing up waiting for winery doors to open. Walk inside, and the
Let’s play a game: let’s imagine the steep, dramatic Douro vineyards of Portugal are completely smooth. Imagine the hostile, rocky landscape of the island of Pantelleria: totally flat. Or the undulating countryside of Cinque Terre (Italy) or the mountainous Lavaux (Switzerland). Do you see what I mean? In this imaginary
It’s lunchtime at the San Simone winery – a homey spread of cheesy mushroom and spinach pastas – and the Brisotto sisters, fourth-generation vintners, are explaining the everyday appeal of Prosecco. A good bottle, they say, is like a good pair of jeans, fuss-free style that goes with everything. True enough,
If you Google "Nobel Prize wine," you'll learn that Brian Schmidt is the only Nobel-winning winemaker. Schmidt and his wife own and operate Maipenrai in Canberra, Australia, and he shared the Nobel in Physics in 2011 for contributing to the case that the universe is expanding – work which, it's