Tuta's Wine

So, we went to a wine tasting for “Italian Wines for American Tastes.”  Deeply unpropitious, I thought.   From Italy, we hope for authenticity, bright with acid, a little bitter, preferably poured from a cracked jug formed by Garibaldi’s mother.   But I will go to almost any wine tasting and, after a while, I [...]

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Fitou is one of the most prominent of the AOC regions in Corbières, south and west of Marseilles and Montpellier, lying just inland from that final arc of the French coast which runs down to Spain and the Pyrenées.  “Fitou” comes from the ancient Occitan word fita  which means border. In August two of us [...]

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Mais surtout, il reigne dans cet endroit un grand calme et une certaine quiétude propice au repos. These words from an anonymous reviewer, enthusiastically describing her stay at Château Grand Renom, may tell us something about the pleasures of seeking out the unknown wines of Bordeaux — those which are perhaps moins renoms.  Without the [...]

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In Tuscany in the year 1300, at the very beginning of the Italian Renaissance, three villages, lying along the troubled border between Florence and Siena, bound themselves into the Lega del Chianti, the Chianti League.   Few municipal decisions would mean so much to the history of wine.  The three villages, Gaiole, Radda and Castellina, [...]

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Though apple and peach lie brilliant on the dark, And mineral worlds on the dark sky shine, And the red mouth breathes in; thine is mine, And the careless Atlantic inhales the Thames, the Tagus and the Seine, – Memoirs of a Turcoman Diplomat, Denis Devlin Fruit and darkness; darkness and fruit — these are [...]

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Every biology student knows that King Philip Came Over From Great Spain (or kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.)   In our craving for order, wine  has its own taxonomy.  The AOC system (appellation d’origine contrôlée) which looks impenetrable is not really so hard to figure out. Consider the AOC system for the Rhône [...]

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The merlot grape — from le merle or the blackbird — grows in loose clusters.  The grapes are  large, thin-skinned and blue-black.  The wine shows these qualities as well.  It is round, rich, and fleshy — the Peter Rubens of the vineyard.  The thin skins produce a wine low in tannins with a soft feel. [...]

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Prosecco is a sparking white wine from the Veneto region in northern Italy.  In recent years, it has become leaner and less sugary.  It once like the sticky Asti Spumante which we drank in high school parking lots.   You can still find yourself with a bottle which tastes sweet and tinny.  But when Prosecco [...]

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