Think of Campania, and Naples and the sun-blessed coasts of Amalfi and Sorrento as well as the looming volcano of Vesuvius come to mind. What few people probably realise is that Campania also boasts its own ‘Switzerland’. Irpinia Head inland northeast of Naples and you come to a hilly, cooler area of the region up in the Apennines. This is Irpinia, the land of the wolf, where you are more likely to encounter snowy winters and autumn rains in its continental climate than the blazing sun you associate with the south of Italy. We visited just on the cusp of the autumn rains and cold winter as we ..read more

The evolution of Bolgheri What was once a malaria-ridden marsh on the Tuscan shore is now one of Italy’s most prestigious wine regions and home to some of the so-called Super Tuscans. Wines such as Sassicaia, Ornellaia and Massetto are now counted among Italy’s most prestigious wines. Yet how did this uninviting, neglected area of the Maremma, where people died from poverty and malaria and prior to WWII produced nondescript red and white wines, peaches, apricots, almonds, potatoes and onions, become one of the most sought-after vineyard areas in Italy – the Tuscan equivalent of Napa? And how d ..read more

Sustainable pruning made cool You’ve all heard of flying winemakers, who dash off around the world imparting their wisdom to young wineries, but how many of you have considered the fact that expert pruners might also be doing something similar? I certainly hadn’t until I met Marco Simonit, when I was lucky enough to attend a whole-day masterclass on pruning organised for Vinitaly Academy alumni and other guests by the Sicilian wine magazine Cronache di Gusto as an educational prelude to their Taormina Gourmet festival. It wasn’t quite what I expected. Sitting in the tasting room at the Pietr ..read more

The vast, 100-hectare Guado al Tasso estate, part of Antinori’s Tuscan empire, stretches from the Strada Bolgherese to the coast road, which bisects all the major estates in the area, taking in a variety of soil types and a range of varieties including Vermentino, the Bordeaux varieties Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, as well as Syrah. Around 320 hectares are planted with vines, while they have 200 hectares of cereal, used to feed their pigs, which incidentally produce excellent salami and ham, as well as 1,000 olive trees. On arrival, we are immediately taken on ..read more

Exploring eastern Sicily Sicily, the ball waiting to be kicked by Italy’s boot, is currently one of the creative hotspots for Italian wine. Long maligned for producing oceans of deeply coloured, overly alcoholic wine that was shipped north by the tankerload to boost the paler wines of the north and France, it then dabbled with international varieties like Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah and finally fell victim to the EU’s vine-pull scheme to halt overproduction and excessive agricultural subsidies. However, Sicily’s winemakers have reawakened and producers around the island are now cr ..read more

Italy is a magnet for lovers of food and wine, attracting around 17 million visitors annually in search of the boot’s gastronomic delights, 90% of whom also arrive with wine tasting on their mind. Yet how many of these visitors end up in the south of the country? A paltry 7%, with Lazio, home to the capital Rome, creaming off a good proportion of that. Most of the Italian food and wine lovers end up in Tuscany, Piedmont and Trentino-Alto Adige. So where does that leave Sicily, once known as ‘God’s kitchen’, with its abundance of fresh produce and increasingly high-quality wines. Well, with a ..read more

Alto Adige, aka Südtirol, is a strange, but delightful place. This most northerly region of Italy used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and is thus a combination of Italian style and Austrian gemütlichkeit, one of those German words it’s simply impossible to translate effectively. Although Italian is widely spoken, you often have the feeling you are in Austria – the signs are in both Italian and German and the people are more likely to converse in German than Italian. We’re here to visit Cantina Tramin, the region’s third oldest winemakers’ cooperative, based in the professed home o ..read more

Vinitaly, the annual wine show devoted principally to Italian wines held in Verona, is always a great opportunity to uncover, discover and explore a bewildering range of regions, varieties and producers. The huge pavilions dedicated to the country’s regions are graced with both the magnificent stands of large, prestigious wineries and smaller, less ostentatious producers with small booths. It’s easy to walk kilometres every day and to lose yourself amongst the overwhelming scale of it all. However, a great place to discover some of the latter, smaller, independent producers is in the FIVI (Fed ..read more

Pecorino’s saviour As soon as we arrive, Marilena leads us off to view the so-called two-hectare mother vineyard, Vigneto Madre, where the first Pecorino vines were planted. We’re in the Offida DOCG in the south of Le Marche to visit the historic producer Tenuta Cocci Grifoni. We gaze out over the rows of Montepulciano lining the steep slope of the historic vineyard of Vigna Messieri to the small hillock of the Vigneto Madre and the Apennine mountains beyond, Gran Sasso, Monte Sibille and Maiella, which is in neighbouring Abruzzo, the other hotspot for Pecorino. The hills are steep, which mak ..read more

Wines of another Puglia I have unashamedly stolen my sub-title from large Puglian winery Torrevento, which dubs itself ‘vini di un alt(r)a Puglia’ – ‘wines of another Puglia’; by removing the ‘r’, you then get ‘wines of an ancient Puglia’. I paid a visit to the winery in the Castel del Monte DOC on the invitation of its Technical Director, Leonardo Palumbo, fellow judge at the 2017 VinAgora International Wine Competition held in Budapest in July. Upon discovering we would be spending this year’s family holiday in Puglia, Leonardo promptly invited me to visit the winery. The name Puglia conjur ..read more