What happiness to find exactly the style of wine we like in a new grape variety. For me the first choice is usually red wine, light, fresh, and bright. Mountain wines, grown where it is a little cooler. Less sugar, less earth, more pebble and snap. So with great pleasure, I stumbled upon Foradori, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Italy'
2007 Serra Paitin Barbaresco
April 24th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Color, Country, Italy, Piedmont, Red
Barbaresco. The wine in a moment, but first let’s enjoy that wonderful name. Bar bar bar is the sound the Greeks heard when they met the Medes and Persians and other strangers. They called these Βαρβαροι, hence barbarians. (Hottentot –the name Europeans once gave to people living in southwest Africa also reflects the sound of [...]
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Fiano di Avellino Mastroberardino 2007
February 27th, 2011 · No Comments · Italy, Red, Uncategorized
…he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Not all of us are as cautious as Gabriel Oak, the stoic farmer who [...]
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Visciole Querci’Antica Velenosi
January 29th, 2011 · No Comments · Italy, Red
Quasi non bevera vino se non de ciriege o de granate. (He drank almost no wine except cherry wine) Vespasiano da Bisticci, biographer of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (1422-1482) Duke Federico drank wine rarely and then only the sour cherry wine which we know today as Visciole. Under the influence of an occasional glass, he [...]
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Sella & Mosca Cannonau di Sardegna Riserva 2006
September 27th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Color, Country, Italy, Red
Let me not thirst with this Hock at my Lip, Nor beg, with Domains in my pocket – Emily Dickinson The Grenache grape grows in a vast arc around the western Mediterranean — from Spain in the west across the south of France and as far east as Sardinia. This is a chthonic peasant’s vine [...]
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La Mondianese Grignolino d’Asti 2007
May 23rd, 2010 · 2 Comments · Color, Country, Italy, Red, Uncategorized
Here is a wine to rush out for: light, brisk, tart — a beautiful brown-red color. This is a marvelous country wine from the Piedmont. Let’s take care of the pronunciation. The second “g” is silent but contributes a “y” sound as we slide into the second syllable. So, “green – yo – leeno.” [...]
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Massolino Barbera d’Alba 2008
February 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Color, Country, Italy, Piedmont, Red
The Barbera grape is the reliable workhorse of the Piedmont vineyards. It is easy to grow (easy for us anyway, sitting down with a glass already poured) and its principal vice is a tendency to produce so much fruit that it can lose intensity. But kept in check with pruning and planted in chalky [...]
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Guido Porro Barolo Vigna Lazzairasco 2003
December 25th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Color, Country, Guido Porro, Importer, Italy, Kermit Lynch, Red, Winemaker
Barolo is the idiosyncratic peak of Italian wines. These are wines from the Piedmont, just below the Alps in the northwestern corner of Italy. Barolo is made from the Nebbiolo grape — literally ‘the little foggy one” after the morning mist which cools the vineyards. What do we love about these wines? The deep, stately [...]
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Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso 2008
November 30th, 2009 · 4 Comments · deGrazia, Italy, Red, Sicily
“This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing around us like lovely mute ghosts …these things have formed our character…” [...]
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Otella Lugana 2008
November 29th, 2009 · 5 Comments · Italy, Trebbiano, White
Otella Lugana 2008. This is a brisk, elegant white wine from the southern shores of Lake Garda in the Veneto region in Italy. Otella is a small family operation. Their wine is immaculate — the palest yellow and scrubbed clean. The nose is delicate and a little briny. The taste has lemon which is a [...]
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