In 1985, Americans bought 11.5 million cases of a fizzy, sweet, pink-tinged Italian wine called Riunite. That’s still a record. Nobody’s broken it since. For over three decades, it held the title of best-selling imported wine in the United States. Not just from Italy. From anywhere. “Riunite on ice, that’s…
Standing in front of a supermarket wine aisle can feel like a quiz you didn’t study for. Hundreds of bottles, nobody to ask, so we all grab the one with the nicest label. Good news: you don’t need to pass the quiz. Bottles you can’t pronounce. DOC, DOCG, and IGT…
I noticed it before I understood why. A bottle that had no business tasting as good as it did, sitting on the everyday shelf at my local shop here in Veneto, priced like it wasn’t expecting anyone to take it seriously. Turns out I wasn’t imagining things, and neither are…
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…
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