MARISA FINETTI | Category: Wine

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…

June 30, 2023

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.…

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…

January 22, 2023January 23, 2023

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…

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…

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…

July 18, 2021July 22, 2021

Sunday Sip Trip: Elevated Italian Bubbles

This enchanting landscape is resplendent with ever-changing hues of green and earth. Its extraordinary beauty is formed in mounds upon mounds of conical hills tightly packed with vines as they sit in the foreground of the Alps. Captivating and incredibly suitable as a backdrop for a film (but no, don’t come here to make a movie), it’s the place to unplug altogether, and I mean pop open the corks and sip the bubbly beauties that come from Conegliano-Valdobbiadene. This wonderland…

June 27, 2021June 27, 2021

Sunday Sip Trip: High Altitude Cabernet Franc

A dream would be to have acreage high above picturesque Tuscan villages overlooking the vast blue Tyrrhenian Sea while enjoying morning coffee. Surrounded by a dense forest of hardwood trees, the land is wild, the terrain pristine, isolated, and private, where wild boar hunting and riding bareback are the only activities before dinner. Nearby is the famous Bolgheri appellation – the area known mainly for deeply colored age-worthy wines usually based on the Bordeaux grape varieties. Up until the 1970s,…

June 14, 2021June 14, 2021

SUNDAY SIP TRIP: The Valtellina

Located in Italy’s northernmost part of the Lombardy region near the Swiss border, Valtellina is known for its extreme vineyards and is the home of Chiavennasca, a local Nebbiolo biotype. The only valley in Italy to run east to west, Valtellina was formed during the last ice age by glaciers that carved out the granite mountains. The Adda River flows from the Swiss Alps toward Lake Como, and along this path, there are more than 25 miles of interconnected vineyards…