On a Wednesday morning in March, Rob McMillan, executive vice president and founder of Silicon Valley Bank’s wine division, discussed his State of the Wine Industry report on the last day of the Wine Writers Symposium in Napa. We have been quoting McMillan for years. Two days later, while we were waiting for our plane home at San Francisco airport, the news broke: Silicon Valley Bank, a critical piece of the California wine industry, had collapsed.
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March 24, 2023
Grape Collective talks to Eduardo about this unique wine journey and the magic of making wine on Etna.
As wine lives, breathes, and evolves, so must wine study books change over time. The best reference books about wine reflect this natural evolution with updated editions that add to an original wealth of material. Italian Wine Unplugged 2.0 is a second-edition book that builds upon the success of Italian Wine Unplugged Grape by Grape, a study guide for students and lovers of Italian wine that debuted in 2017. Compiled by a team of wine experts and educators, the first edition quickly became a benchmark and has been used as the core textbook for the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA), a leader in Italian wine education.
As its subtitle, Grape by Grape, suggests, the first edition focuses on Italian grapes, specifically 430+ indigenous varieties. Within its pages, you will find all the well-known varieties like Sangiovese and Nebbiolo as well as the obscure, hard-to-pronounce grapes such as Susumaniello...
March 10, 2023Wine should be joyful. If you ever think it becomes routine to people in the industry, we’d urge you to look at the picture of Marcus Notaro as he celebrates Open That Bottle Night. Notaro is the head winemaker at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and quite famous, but when it came to OTBN, he was like a kid in a candy store and it shows on his face.
“I enjoy celebrating Open That Bottle Night each year. I chose the 1997 S.L.V. as it’s from a benchmark vintage in Napa Valley and the wines in the mid-’90s are in a sweet spot right now,” he told us. (His lovely video of tasting the wine is on Twitter @StagsLeapCASK23.)(Marcus Notaro)
Winemakers from all over – Singlefile Wines in Australia, Domaine Gayda in Languedoc – opened special bottles, too. And it wasn’t just winemakers, of course. OTBN was celebrated by regular wine-loving folks from El Salvador, to Chicago to South ...
The Flaibani estate is located in Cividale del Friuli in the Colli Orientali del Friuli area very close to the Slovenian border. The Flaibanis have three hectares of planted vineyards, all terraced and with steep slopes, that resemble a garden surrounded by six hectares of woods. They are working with vines over 100 years old with their youngest vines over 20 years. They produce less than 10,000 bottles of six different types of wine from Schioppettino, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Friulano, and Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso. Their wines have a vibrancy, energy and quality that validate all the passion and hard work behind them.
February 24, 2023Only the oldest of Miami old-timers will remember that there used to be a Grand Union on Coral Way. It was replaced long ago by a sad mall. We lived in Miami then and bought some of our wines at that Grand Union. On Jan. 3, 1980, we picked up a bottle of Always Elvis, an Italian white we carefully noted as “non-vintage,” for $3.29.
February 17, 2023Grape Collective talks to Gualtiero Crea of Les Granges in the village of Nus near the town of Aosta, about how the wines of Valle d'Aosta are unique and the region's alpine landscape, climate, and culture.
February 10, 2023We created OTBN in 1999 for a simple reason: When we started writing about wine, the question we received most often was “I have this one special bottle that I got on vacation (or at my wedding, or at an auction…) When do I open it?” Our answer was always: NOW! But we realized it’s not that easy. Sometimes, the longer we save a bottle “for a special occasion,” the bigger the special occasion has to become and the memories and joy inside that bottle get trapped forever.
February 08, 2023Pierre Caizergues started making wines in Montreal d’Aude west of Carcassonne in southwestern France in 2015. He was joined by his friend, winemaker Antonin Bonnet, full time in 2020. The two friends specialize in low intervention wines (low or no added sulfites), with varietals like Carignan, and some resistant varietals such as Cabernet Cortis and Souvignier Gris. They also separately make a Mourvèdre in the village of Saint Jean de Fos in the Larzac region of France. Larzac is a bit further east in the Hérault region while all the other wines they make are made in Aude near the estate in Montreal d’Aude / Hameau de Stricou.
February 03, 2023Campania offers some of Italy's great sensory experiences from the beaches of the Amalfi Coast, the ruins of Pompeii, to the food and energy of Naples. It also is home to four of Italy's great wine grapes Aglianico, Fiano di Avellino, Falanghina and Greco di Tufo.
The Di Meo winery, located in the province of Avellino, is one of the most celebrated Campania estates focusing squarely on native varietals. In the early '80s, three siblings Erminia, Generoso and Roberto Di Meo acquired the historical estate from their parents, which includes 25 hectares and an 18th century farmhouse that was once a hunting lodge of the Caracciolo Prince....
