International Women’s day is a perfect opportunity to celebrate the successes and achievements of a number of brilliant women at the helm of innovative, sustainable and design-led premium wine estates.
Veneto winery Terre dei Buth, purveyor of organic, vegan, fresh and fruity Prosecco, and elegant Pinot Grigio, is making a splash with a strong, clean design aesthetic and a genuine environmental sensibility. These factors combined make it one of a growing number of sustainable wine estates to watch.
At the beginning of Argentinian French novelist Julio Florencio Cortázar’s experimental novel 62 Modelo para Armar, the protagonist and intellectual, Juan, asks himself the question ‘And why did I ask for a bottle of Sylvaner?’ You might wonder why indeed, as it seems like an inauspicious ..
What is it about the mysterious tuber-like truffle that seems so luxurious compared to its more pedestrian cousin, the humble mushroom? The truffle belongs to that top-tier of niche culinary curiosities which also includes famously rare delicacies such as Beluga caviar, Iberico ham and Foie gras.
Let everything happen to you:Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling isfinal.
The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda wrote often about the joys of traversing a great path and once mused that he might ‘examine myself with no witness but the moon and then whistle with joy, ambling over rocks and clods of earth, with no task but to live, with no family but the road’.
Bodegas Tempore is truly a family affair. Grand custodian of the operation is Antonio, the patriarch, who turned a youthful 102 years old in July.
Felipe García is a winemaker and entrepreneur who began making wine in 2006 with an ambitious vision to create low intervention, sustainably orientated wines of origin which reflected a keen sense of place.
In the town of Haro, in Spain’s famous La Rioja region, lies a historic region often described as Haro’s ‘open air’ museum where at almost every corner you are greeted by bronze and stone statues depicting traditional trades.
PS Garcia is a project that began in 2006 when Felipe Garcia produced his first wines from Casablanca Valley, the renowned cool climate region just 30km inland from Chile's Pacific coast.
The wines of Pyramid Valley are born in the dramatic soils and slopes of the Waikari Estate in North Canterbury and the Manata Estate in Central Otago, south island New Zealand.
Steve Smith MW has a formidable reputation in the wine industry: renowned for establishing Craggy Range in Hawke’s Bay and Martinborough, he is also one of few qualified Master of Wines to be based in New Zealand.
This cooperative in the river-side village of Pouilly-sur-Loire was founded in 1948 by a handful of winemakers and continues to work with a group of dedicated growers whose vineyards stretch across Pouilly Fumé, Pouilly-sur-Loire and Coteaux du Giennois.
Eric Louis is a fourth generation winegrower and vigneron, working the same vineyards that his great grandmother Pauline did when she founded the family estate in the 19th century.
The final of three new German estates added at the start of February, Balthasar Ress was the most polished and modern of the wineries we visited late last summer, and yet it's still over 150 years old and in the fifth generation of family ownership.
Yeah ok, so our German was pretty limited (zwei bier, bitte!) but our heads spun and palates gushed with new experiences and flavours in the Rheingau at the end of last summer.
We're delighted to introduce to the portfolio this month, three new wineries and 20 new wines from Germany that are over two years in the sourcing. We had a trip to the Rhine Valley all booked for April 2020, the first full month of lockdown all across Europe as Covid upended our lives.
Probably the most exciting release and buying opportunity we’ve had the privilege to present in our 13 years in business. Bodegas Corral is the winery behind Don Jacobo, the Rioja wines a lot of you are familiar with from the last year or so since we started importing and distributing them.
This is the sort of wine we exist for and precisely why we aspiringly named ourselves Curious Wines back in 2008. This is Maturana Tinta de Navarrete, a grape deemed lost to history until modern testing revealed it to be unique and unrelated to anything else grown in Rioja.
La Cave du Vieil Armand is one of the smallest cooperative cellars in Alsace, pulling together the vineyards and generational expertise of 80 wine growing families across 10 municipalities.
Il Muro estate has been owned by the Pancaro family for more than two centuries.
Something completely new here, folks. 'Governo' is a winemaking technique going back to 14th century Tuscany whereby a proportion of the harvest is held back, partially dried and then added to the already fermenting first portion of the harvest.
I've mentioned before my stock reply to the oft-asked question I get in the shop, "what's your favourite wine out of all of them?". It's like asking me which of my kids is my favourite — it depends on the day. Schola Sarmenti is unapologetically my favourite child right now.
About a million years ago, when my now early teens were in nappies and we were just getting Curious Wines off the ground, I met Sam Brannigan at a wine tasting in Enniskillen.
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