There’s a castle at the southern tip of Lake Garda that you can only reach on foot, across a drawbridge, over water on every side. Cars stop outside the gate. You walk in like everyone has for the last seven hundred years. The Scaligero Castle in Sirmione has stood since…
There are hotel spas and then there is the Terme della Valpolicella. Most hotel spas give you eucalyptus steam rooms, a swimming pool, and a list of treatments with names like “Serenity Journey” that involve warm stones and someone playing a flute somewhere in the background. The spa at Villa…
I have been living in Italy for years now. I drink Italian wine regularly, I write about it obsessively, and I genuinely believe it is some of the finest wine on earth. And I had absolutely no idea this happened until I started digging. In the spring of 1986, Italy…
There are wines you drink. And then there is Barolo — the kind of wine that doesn’t accept being ignored. You don’t open it on a random Tuesday. You don’t multitask with it. If you treat it like background wine, it responds accordingly: it shuts down and makes you work…
Prosecco vs Champagne vs Spumante I have a small bone to pick, and it’s been sitting in my glass for a while now. Every time someone hands me a glass of Prosecco and calls it “Italian Champagne,” a tiny part of me dies. Not dramatically. Just a little. The way…
This might be the most controversial thing I write on this blog. Not because Italians don’t love food. They absolutely do. This is a country that can turn a conversation about pasta into a family argument lasting three generations. But after spending time around Italian wine culture, I’ve become convinced…
The first time it happens, you assume it’s a mistake. You’re sitting at a restaurant somewhere in Italy. Maybe it’s a small trattoria. Maybe it’s a family-run place with handwritten menus and a waiter who somehow knows everybody in town. You ask for a bottle of wine. The waiter points…
I once watched a tourist stare at a glass of wine in Italy as if he’d just been personally insulted. The waiter arrived. He ordered a local red. The waiter poured the wine. Then walked away. The tourist looked down at the glass. Then at his wife. Then back at…
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