Yearly Archives: 2025

  When the song of the terroir drowns out the background noise Five years ago, I tasted a new addition to the Zidarich portfolio. I was already deeply enamoured with…

The time for wine is a feeling akin to switching off one’s phone (or sloughing off one’s work persona), marking a point in the day when one’s behaviour for a…

Puglian all one’s talents I Parieti was founded in 2019 by Matteo Santoiemma on his family farm in the Murge between Bari, Taranto and Matera. Matteo personally takes care of…

What is bang-for-buck wine? The Bang  …happens when a wine that favourably impacts your senses. It does not have to be obvious or powerful, the proverbial 2 x4 to the…

What is bang-for-buck wine? The Bang  …happens when a wine that favourably impacts your senses. It does not have to be obvious or powerful, the proverbial 2 x4 to the…

  We’re getting used to wines being other than what they should be. Cue a woad-spattered Mel Gibson screaming “freedom!” at the top of his lungs. Vin de France has…

'Tween seasons (summer & autumn) bottles End of summer sounds so final. Like the end of childhood. I always associate September with going back after hols like “the whining school-boy,…

Why are you not tasting what I am tasting? (I ask silently) Why are you making undue allowances for a wine that is plainly not interesting? To me! Every rhetorical…

Sclavos Tsausi, Cephalonia, Greece The Sclavos family traces its roots back for centuries in Cephalonia. A branch of the family emigrated in 1700 to the Black Sea port of Odessa…

A magnificent six ride again   Italy was known as Enotria Tellus, the land of vines. Metternich said that Italy was “a geographical expression.” From the Alpine valleys of Valle…