Most people visit Padova for the frescoes and the basilica, then head home without noticing the bumps on the skyline south of the city. Those bumps are volcanoes. Extinct, very well behaved, and covered in vines. I’ve toured a winery there, watched a harvest and even stomped grapes with my…
Picture walking through Pompeii. Ancient streets, ruined houses, frescoes that somehow survived a volcano, Vesuvius sitting in the distance looking far too calm considering what it did the last time. Then you turn a corner and there’s a vineyard. Not a reconstruction behind glass, not a handful of decorative vines…
Ripasso is often called “baby Amarone.” I’ll be honest: I can’t remember anyone saying this to me at a table or in a wine shop. This nickname shows up constantly in wine writing and almost nowhere else. That’s exactly why I wanted to dig into where it comes from, rather…
Two nights, two great wineries, Lake Iseo and plenty of Franciacorta. Here’s how I’d plan a wine weekend without turning it into a tasting marathon.
There is a wine auction happening in Milan, and some of the bottles on the list look less like something you open with dinner and more like something you discuss with your accountant. Nothing here touches the truly absurd numbers on my list of the world’s most expensive wines, but…
Ripasso and Amarone both come from Valpolicella in Veneto. Both lean on the same traditional grapes, mainly Corvina, Corvinone, and Rondinella. They can sit right next to each other on a wine shop shelf and look equally Italian. They still hand you two completely different evenings. One is richer than…
Ripasso is what happens when Valpolicella decides it wants a little more drama. Regular Valpolicella is bright, fresh, full of sour-cherry energy. Amarone is richer, warmer, and considerably more intense. Ripasso sits comfortably between the two. It carries more body and depth than ordinary Valpolicella. It’s usually easier to drink…
For years, alcohol-free wine had exactly one hard problem, and it wasn’t the alcohol. It was the wine. You could remove the alcohol easily enough. Design a nice label, print 0.0% somewhere reassuringly large, and tell everyone this was the future of drinking. Then somebody tasted it. Too sweet, too…
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