MARISA FINETTI | Category: Columns

November 3, 2024November 4, 2024

Writer and illustrator Marisa Finetti releases Tiny Tales of Umbria, an engaging new medium for wine regions to blend storytelling, wine, and culture

Acclaimed wine writer and illustrator Marisa Finetti, creator of Marisa’s Wine Doodles, is excited to unveil her second book, Tiny Tales of Umbria – A Madrevite Story. This innovative book transcends the typical boundaries of wine literature, inviting readers to explore Italy’s “green heart” through an immersive storybook journey, rich with illustration and charm. Commissioned by Madrevite winery, Tiny Tales of Umbria celebrates the spirit of Umbria with what Marisa calls a “sip trip” through local wines, offering a taste…

June 25, 2024July 19, 2024

You never truly drink alone

: by Kirk Peterson and Marisa Finetti : Great wine is art that must be destroyed to be enjoyed. It is an anachronism, a vestige of another time and another way of living. Vines are fussed and fawned over, cajoled and supplicated to give up their fruit for wine to then be locked away from the world, aging and changing and developing at a rate entirely its own. It presents an opportunity to taste the labors of people long gone,…

January 6, 2024January 6, 2024

A bounty of deliciousness in Reggio Emilia

The tri-colored Italian flag was established here. It’s the birthplace of a renowned educational philosophy, and the city where the young Kobe Bryant started dribbling the basketball. Reggio, as locals call it, is also the home of Luciano Pavarotti’s first operatic performance and the headquarters of Italy’s Max Mara fashion house. Amid its cobbled streets dotted with historical churches, theatres, galleries, and monuments, Reggio Emilia is already culturally and fashionably rich. And then there’s food and wine. Situated perfectly between…

October 15, 2023October 15, 2023

Lake fish, beans, and Umbria’s other red wine

Even a seasoned traveler may skirt past the shores of Lake Trasimeno to discover the better-known wine regions of Umbria, like Montefalco (home to the Sagrantino grape) and Orvieto (known for their historic white blends). However, the land around Lake Trasimeno, located in the northwest pocket of the “green heart of Italy,” offers charming discoveries of a grape and wine curiously called Gamay del Trasimeno, a bean saved from extinction, and a bounty of lake fish prepared like game. As…

July 31, 2023July 31, 2023

Biondi-Santi: The wonderment and beauty of wine

The long and picturesque row of towering trees that line the driveway at Biondi-Santi’s Tenuta Greppo estate is a welcome unlike any other. The slow approach down the drive provides time to ponder this moment, this month (June 2023), and to imagine what it must be like for wine producers of Montalcino. Certainly, it was atypical. Moderately warm, the summer was constantly mingling with the threat of rainfall that ranged from light showers to lightning strikes and torrential downpours. Now…

April 19, 2023April 19, 2023

Tiny wineries of great quality make a splash at Vinitaly

In Verona, Italy, the largest international exposition featuring 4,000 companies from 30 countries is magnificently daunting. And as in the case of David and Goliath, smaller producers in the battle of the giants can result in a win with wines that are just as amazing and sometimes even more storied than the larger ones. Made possible at Vinitaly for the second year, a focused and organized effort to showcase these tiny (micro) wineries of high-quality (mega) wines was found in…

September 14, 2022September 15, 2022

Life with Mateja Gravner & friends

Mateja Gravner met us for dinner at the cozy Ristorante Laite in the postage-stamp-sized mountain village of Sappada, Italy. I have written about Gravner in the past and was always intrigued by the mystery surrounding this biodynamic wine producer located on the far edge of Oslavia, just a stone’s throw from Slovenia. But today was the first time I would meet Mateja in person. Her disposition is kind and casual but gracefully confident. Her wholesome beauty is carried by her…

January 19, 2022January 20, 2022

FERNET-BRANCA, THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF DRINKS

It’s the kaleidoscope of drinks. Made from bits of roots, herbs, flowers, and spices, it offers an endless variety of multi-sensorial personalities, emotionally-colorful synesthesia, ever-changing, and reflective. An amaro can be citrusy, herbaceous, floral, vegetal, medicinal, earthy, savory – a continuous showing of some or all. These flavors are imparted through the process of maceration of botanicals in a grain spirit, often followed by blending and resting to harmonize all the flavors. One of my early illuminating moments into amaro…

November 26, 2021November 27, 2021

Holiday Leftovers with the Right Wine Pairing

Written by Marisa Finetti & Kirk Peterson After the once-glorious, now Tupperware’d holiday dinner leftovers are banished to the fridge for the night, it seems only right to give them the attention they deserve when they inevitably re-emerge the next day. Reheated Thanksgiving dinner plate. You kept declining the offer to “make you a plate,” but they wouldn’t let you leave without it. Now, you’re famished and suddenly that congealed mess of browns, greens and smattering of reds actually look…

August 21, 2021August 21, 2021

Sunday Sip Trip: Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot Noir

Apple Park sits low in the distance – a ring tossed in a sea of technology. But unplug. How fortunate for the three million people of Silicon Valley to be so near to wine country. Those familiar deep green hills to the west are so close but so untraveled, and continue to be one of the most over-looked wine appellations of the world. Those who are aware of Santa Cruz Mountain wines have fully engaged palates. They know and appreciate…