In the US, only 2% of professionals are black and mentorship programs flourish. In Italy? The question is not being asked. The word “diversity” in wine in Italy is widely used, but almost always referring to grape varieties or appellations: we are a bio-diverse country, we know, but are we also an inclusive country? What do we mean by inclusivity? The fact that there is not even the specific word in Italian tells us a lot about the question. As an American and an Italian citizen, I observe these two worlds carefully: on the one hand, there are many things I would import from Italy to the U.S ..read more

Visit to Bodegas Tradicion, Jerez de la Frontera You cannot visit Andalusia without stopping in the Sherry Triangle, homeland of the fortified wine whose history is deeply linked to the culture of this land.  In addition to architectural wonders that incredibly blend Western and Arab culture into symbols of extraordinary beauty, in Andalusia you will encounter the tradition of sharing small snacks of local products (tapas) accompanied by a glass of sherry, often tapped straight from the barrel in what they call tabancos in Jerez, the equivalent of European taverns, which were born in the ..read more

If you have attended schools to become a sommelier or wine tasting courses, I am sure you have come across these precepts: “cork is best for wines that need to evolve because it breathes, while screw caps or synthetic polymer corks block oxygen.” Or: “bottles should absolutely be stored lying horizontally”. I myself professed these commandments assuming that they had taught me true things. But they didn’t.  During a wonderful trip to discover cork and the entire supply chain that makes corks thanks to Amorim Cork, the world’s leading company in the industry, I saw the teachings of sommeli ..read more

I have been a professional journalist for almost 15 years, I started from local newspapers reporting on city councils, then I landed in crime reporting, judicial reporting, and politics for radio and TV. I always wanted to be a journalist, as a child my eyes lit up at the first notes of the Tg1 theme song (the main news program on Italian national tv), and as a pre-teen I dreamed of wearing a veil like Lilli Gruber (the TG1 correspondent ) and reporting on war from places that seemed so far away that they could not exist. Of the journalism profession, two things fascinated me: the telling of f ..read more

From Portugal’s forests to the wine bottle When we uncork a bottle of wine, of the cork we generally care about two things: that it does not break and that it has not contributed to impair strange odors to the wine, in short, that it has held up preserving the wine without carrying the famous TCA, the trichloroanisole molecule responsible for the “corky” smell. Which then is actually a musty smell, but often times all the blame is placed on the cork, which especially if it is natural cork, is the first scapegoat. We pull it out, smell it (some people even smell plastic ones, never mind), and s ..read more

From Portugal’s forests to the bottle When we uncork a bottle of wine, of the cork we generally care about two things: that it does not break and that it has not contributed to impair strange odors to the wine, in short, that it has held up preserving the wine without carrying the famous TCA, the trichloroanisole molecule responsible for the “corky” smell. Which then is actually a musty smell, but often times all the blame is placed on the cork, which especially if it is natural cork, is the first scapegoat. We pull it out, smell it (some people even smell plastic ones, never mind), and second ..read more

The story of Musivum, the cru selection that values teamwork The small single tile in a mosaic may seem insignificant, not indispensable, when considered on its own. Yet if this principle were applied to all the small tiles, the whole mosaic would not exist, there would be no art, nor beauty to admire. So how much does a tile, an element, a detail matter?  Small is beautiful, big is commercial? Musivum, a tribute to the mosaic vineyard tiles Mirta and its centuries-old Teroldego vineyard Local communities custodians of a sense of belonging Interview with oenologist director Fabio Tosca ..read more

The Trentino wine consortium is the first Italian regional territorial organization to adopt an official annual sustainability report. It is not just about paperwork and bureaucracy, it is about a valuable change of approach in the management of wine assets, shifting the focus from economic profitability to environmental cost, it is about reversing the logic from producing more to producing less and better.  The sustainability report has been published after years of commitment in this regard: in fact, since 2016 the consortium member wineries have begun a process for certification under ..read more

I publish below something that apparently has little to do with wine: the story you are about to read came out of a collaboration with the company Passoni Sedie in San Giovanni al Natisone, in the province of Udine, in the heart of the ancient chair craft district. It was reading Custodi del Vino, my second book, that inspired Tommaso Passoni, now head of the company, to ask me to try my hand at telling the story of the wood supply chain behind their designer chairs in my own style. So I went in person to visit that triangle of hills and vineyards on the border with Slovenia to observe, to kno ..read more

Tasting as a professional has brought me over the years to be a judge in many international competitions, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the London International Wine Challenge, passing through 5Star wines at Vinitaly.  Each competition has its own rules and mechanisms, but basically it is a group of qualified people who blind taste wines (with little information about them, that is provenance, vintage and blend, only in the USA also the price range) and are called to express a judgment in numbers or medals. As a general scheme it is considered 100 f ..read more