Category: Home

Rockin’ the Brunello in Montalcino

In the early Miocene period, the Tuscan hills were submerged under sea level due to the Earth’s violent movement. This led to the creation of valleys, which were later flooded by seawater. When the seawater dried out, it left behind deposits of calcium carbonate from seashells, which underwent various processes such as recrystallization, compaction, uplift, exposure, and weathering. Over time, these processes resulted in the formation of alabaster deposits in cracks and layers in sedimentary rocks like limestone.  Montalcino is…

Continue reading

Vintage: Old-is-New-Again Vineyard Practices

We’re talking about vintage as it pertains to something classic and enduring from the past, like the days of pre-industrial agriculture.  In these fast-paced times,  where technology is transforming the wine world, from augmented reality labels to AI-crafted wine blends, some things do remain – thank goodness. Contemporary innovations are paving the path, but the wine industry’s future is also grounded in the soil with vineyard practices based on age-old holistic farming techniques.  Conversations around “revolutionary” vineyard practices point to…

Continue reading

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…

Continue reading

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…

Continue reading

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…

Continue reading

Podere Le Ripi: Guardians of the land

“We’re more focused on the richness of life,” says Sebastian Nasello, CEO and winemaker at Podere Le Ripi. Situated at the end of a long and gravely dirt road near the village of Castenuovo dell’Abate just south of Montalcino, Podere Le Ripi is more than a biodynamic winery and farm; it’s its own ecosystem. A thick row of lavender hosts dancing winged pollinators – bumble bees, honey bees and paper-white butterflies. Swallows fly about in response to the impending storm.…

Continue reading

Ten Questions with Chef Renato Giusti

Chef Renato Giusti has established himself as an international culinary rock star with over 30+ years in the kitchen. From his start with Gualtiero Marchesi (the first Italian chef to ever receive three Michelin stars) after serving as Head Chef in one and two Michelin star restaurants in Montalcino and Rome, an opportunity took Renato to serve as the opening Executive Chef of the Restaurant & Club Bellagio in Amalty, Kazakhstan. While at Restaurant & Club Bellagio, he won “Best…

Continue reading

The next chapter: Wines of Sicily

Are we still in Sicily? Indeed, we weren’t in Palermo anymore. The beautiful and distinctively gritty capital city from two days ago boasted the impressive and massive neoclassical Teatro Massimo opera house, the largest collection of mummified remains in Europe, and a cathedral designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Palermo was also a bit slippery underfoot and yet olfactorily stimulating – at the fish markets – where we sat at L’Acerba for shrimp crudo, chunks of fried cod, and…

Continue reading

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…

Continue reading

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…

Continue reading