The Ghost Grape: Renaming “Tocai”

Elisabetta Tosi
Feature Stories
5 min read
Surrounded by a sea of vineyards with a few rural houses sprinkled here and there, a tall white tower rises up in the countryside close to the small village of San Martino della Battaglia. The setting is Northern Italy, near Venice. Here on the 24th of June 1859, a bloody

Rías Baixas: Spain’s Little Green Giant

Roger Morris
Feature Stories
4 min read
Using a patchwork system of thousands of growers, Rias Baixas makes certain you are never without a glass of Albariño. It is the third evening of my recent tour of Rías Baixas, and there is again a gentle drizzle as we walk the narrow, ancient streets of Pontevedra en route to

Blind Tasting: Unreliable but Necessary

W. Blake Gray
Features
4 min read
Blind tasting is an artificial experience. Consumers don't taste wines blind, except as a game. If you really want to enjoy a glass of wine, you need to know what it is. Where it came from. Who made it. Its story. But blind tasting is essential for critics. It's the

The Lugana Lottery

Simon J Woolf
Features
3 min read
Tasting note: Intense bouquet of mushrooms and stale toffee, with fecal overtones. Great gobs of vinegar, wet earth and unripe apple, with a persistent finish of candle wax. Tempting? I'm describing the typical profile of white wines that have been matured – more like abandoned – way beyond their shelf

The viniferous joys of Lucca

Mike Riccetti
Feature Stories
4 min read
Less than fifty miles west of Florence, the handsome walled city of Lucca is not exactly unknown, but its wines certainly are. Given the attention Tuscany receives in the entertainment industry and from wine-loving tourists alike, it might come as a surprise that there are worthwhile wines and even entire