For over twenty years, Weingut Alois Lageder has been inviting winegrowers from all over the world to an annual collaborative event in Magrè at the Alto Adige Wine Road. While a few dozen kilometres down the A22 at VinItaly in Verona, everything is about business, the Summa is more like a friendly family gathering of winegrowers, individuals who not only care deeply about … [Read more...]
Exceptional 2016 Bordeaux vintage on show in Antwerp
The 2016 Bordeaux vintage has been billed as the best since 2010 and from a recent tasting of a number of wines in Antwerp that is really the case. The Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux brought together representatives from over 50 chateaux in Bordeaux for a unique dinner with the trade and press in Antwerp recently. It is not normal for so many representatives of Bordeaux … [Read more...]
Four new grape varieties permitted for Austrian quality wine
Four new white wine varieties are now permitted for Qualitätswein (quality wine) in Austria, via a collective amendment to Austrian wine law. Three of these are fungus-resistant new crossings known as PIWIs. Blütenmuskateller, Goldmuskateller, Muscaris and Souvignier Gris, all white grape varieties, were elevated to the status of Qualitätswein varieties during the summer … [Read more...]
Get ready for disruption in the wine industry: How Gary Vaynerchuk and Empathy Wines plan to cut the middlemen and sell the best $20 wine
Gary Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary Vee has created Empathy Wines with a radical new way of selling wine. With the aim of eliminating the middlemen, Empathy Wines wants to sell the best possible wines at a $20 price point for wines that would normally sell at double the price. Jon Troutman, CEO of Empathy Wines told Food and Wine Gazette that staring a wine brand is … [Read more...]
The wine battle: biodynamic vs natural wines
Around 10 years ago, I sat for a five session course on wine tasting. The sommelier who was organising the wine course presented us with a range of natural wines, a few excellent, most foul. The scope was not to convince us about the merits or not of natural wine but rather to allow us to spot the defects in a wine whether it was natural or not. Move 10 years and in 2018, … [Read more...]
