Exploring Italian Wine One Grape at a Time
Emozioni dal Mondo is a wine competition that has a focus on Bordeaux-style wines made with the French grapes Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from all over the world. The wine competition started out in 2004 as a series of tasting events that were centered around the Bordeaux blend wines produced in the Bergamo area, more … Read more
A Sirio can be considered to have helped to mark the general wine style of the Sangervasio winery. On September 25th, I headed by train towards Pontedera where Lisa Tommasini waited to pick us up and continue towards their winery, Sangervasio. The occasion was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their A Sirio wine. A … Read more
From a cold winter’s day in Siena…to a warm and sunny summer day with lots of wine and fun at the #Caciara party in San Clemente in Romagna… Well, it was indeed in January and at the Wine & Siena event that I first met and tasted the wines of Enio Ottaviani winery. However, it was … Read more
On February 14th, the day most people are going out to celebrate with their loved ones, I had a lovely experience of Carmignano DOCG wines at Villa Artimino. I went there with Marco Gemelli, a wine journalist, and friend of mine, and his wife as well as Helen Farrell, the editor of The Florentine, and … Read more
When you get invited to a wine tasting such as the one that took place on February 11th in Palazzo Gondi, in the heart of Florence, with Chianti Rufina wines…it is almost like reaching a moment of Zen. At least for me, being a former professional historian, even though my specialization was nationalism in the … Read more
Already a couple of years ago, at the yearly Anteprima (sneak peek) of the Consorzio Vino Chianti in Tuscany, I tasted the wines of Daniele Rosti at Campochiarenti. And from the beginning, I really liked and enjoyed tasting his Chianti Colli Senesi wines. We were also following each other on Twitter. Then a year ago … Read more
Ever since my Master studies in history back in Sweden and all through my Ph.D. studies, I have been fond of the period from the French Revolution onwards, especially the 19th century and the Risorgimento. My focus was more on the image of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Europe in the 19th century, rather than on Napoleon, … Read more
“She walks in Beauty, like the night” from She Walks in Beauty, by George Gordon, Lord Byron Even though it is still somewhere between winter and spring, and on the hills surrounding Livorno last weekend it was fairly rainy and grey, it is still a place that “walks in beauty”. Livorno is known as one … Read more
As you have probably understood by now, February is the month when you can get all the sneak peeks of the Tuscan wines being launched during the year. Together with my friend and fellow sommelier Nadia Padrin, we have so far covered the sneak peeks of Nobile di Montepulciano (covered by Nadia), Tuscany Taste, (the … Read more
At the #WinesOfItaly Blab before Christmas, Costanza Yael Aviv Castelnuovo-Tedesco, owner of the wine bar Uva Nera in Florence, was a guest. She talked about her wine bar and presented two wines and the producers behind them. The producers are Panizzi, well known for their Vernaccia di San Gimignano, and Vallone di Cecione, producing a … Read more