‘’Ribolla Gialla is the typical vine of these areas and is the one worth working on, what interests me the most." A phrase heard a myriad of times, first by colleagues and friends passionate about wine and then later by Josko Gravner himself, during a tasting.This desire to stop producing red wines is clear to me, I understand the …

  “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of… We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”  Blaise Pascal This morning I took courage and I removed the post-it from the fridge. “March 25th. Air France flight at 6.10 “. I had just woken up, I was still numb from sleep with cotton mouth …

  Once upon a time there was a biting wine … evocative, wasn’t it? It always sounds good as incipit once upon a time. It is reassuring. It is a phrase that smells good. It was the ‘yoga’ of the 70s, when my generation still liked to write the letter to Santa Claus, or reclaim the poem learned by heart …

Champagne is ‘a serious thing’, even for those familiar with wine. Champagne has that unusual habit of showing up in an evening dress and never making you feel too comfortable in your Sunday dress. I myself, when opening a bottle of Champagne I suffer a kind of reverential fear.  I am surprised to find myself shy and reserved; when I …

  Parlare del Rodano significa parlare di una realtà plurale e composita sotto tutti i punti di vista: climatico, ampelografico, geologico, culturale.  L’area vitivinicola del Rodano si articola in due grandi zone: il Rodano settentrionale, che si estende da Vienne a Valence, e quello meridionale, che si sviluppa all’incirca tra Montélimar e Avignone, ma per estensione e diversità pedoclimatiche si …

Rome has a long, deep-rooted relationship with wine. From ancient Rome to the present day, wine has always been an inseparable part of its culture. Wine is one of the main elements that defines the image of the eternal city to the outer world: ancient ruins everywhere – and not just behind closed gates- a seemingly infinite number of catholic churches (St. Peter’s Basilica might ring a bell) and, most importantly of course, pizza, pasta and wine, yay! And when you are sitting on a sunny terrace and sipping on a glass (or a bottle) of wine next to a historic fountain, you cannot escape the integrated contrast as well as the strong harmony between then and now, whilst your mind might drift off to wondering what life was like when Julius Caesar was still ruling this city. Well, that is an experience you would really have to… Experience! But let us at least shed some light on the Roman wines and the difference between our modern Roman wine culture and the ancient one.

Although there is no legal definition of how a natural wine is made, there are a few principles that consistently abide to the basic idea that wine should be made in the vineyard, not the cellar: no added chemicals, no added sulfites (or just the bare minimal amount), no temperature control during fermentation, no added yeast, no fining or filtration, and no pesticides or herbicides in the vineyard.