As I finish up an excellent (though whirlwind) jaunt to Collio, my latest piece for Napa Valley Wine Academy has been published, focused (somewhat ironically, considering it’s at the opposite end of Italy from where I’ve just visited) on the wines and producers of Sicily’s Etna. The wine cognoscenti love to wax philosophically about “volcanic”…
Tag: Italian Wine
If Wishes Were Horses… Or Dogs (Drei Donà Romagna Recent Releases)
While Giovanna Drei Donà “hates” technical questions about wine, she is fond of horses; maybe more fond of horses than her children Ida Vittoria and Enrico, the fourth generation who have helped to run the winemaking operations at the picturesque Drei Donà estate now owned by her husband Count Claudio Drei Donà (who focused on…
Out Of Time In Piedmont (Scarpa Recent Releases)
Despite the fact that I have content to write up that spans more than a year of travel (including my takes on the wine scene in Israel, the southern Rhone, and Romagna), the thing that’s been rattling around in my brain and not letting the hell go stems from a much more recent excursion, when…
The Almost-Full Monty (Montefalco Sagrantino Anteprima 2014)
Back in February, I spent a handful of days in the charmingly-imposing Italian town of Montefalco, as the U.S. media guest attending the anteprima showing of Sagrantino’s somewhat-troubled 2014 vintage. Generally, the way that these things work is that we press-types get to sit around in beautiful locales tasting (and pontificating upon) the latest –…