As the saying goes, hell is the absence of reason. But for 9diDANTE founder Alex Ouziel, hell was the absence of quality wine in Vermouth. Ouziel is a 20+ year alcohol industry veteran, originally from Barcelona, who moved to Moscow in the mid-1990s working for an importer of Spanish wines. This stint was followed by…
Category: kick-ass wines
Understated Extremes (Quinta do Vesuvio Recent Releases)
“We are very much at an extreme viticultural zone, [with a geography that is] exceptionally difficult to farm. Our yields are some of the lowest in the world. We are already working very much on what are the limits of viticultural production.” You can take the Symington out of Britain, butt you can’t take the…
Pokémon Power, Aussie Style (Fowles Victoria Recent Releases)
Welcome to the third installment of my three-parter on the wines of Austraila’s Victoria region (if you missed them, catch up on Part 1 and Part 2). Today, I’m featuring one of Victoria’s hundreds of family-run producers, Fowles Wine. In April of 2024, I had the pleasure of attending a media dinner at Philly’s Sampan…
Family Matters (Victoria Wines, Part 2)
Welcome to Part 2 (you can check out Part 1 here) of my 3-parter feature on the wines of Victoria, Australia—an area rich in small animals that can quickly kill you (like the box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, and redback spider… hell, even the magpies are dangerous there. But it’s also home to a diverse an…