A blanc de noir from near Sierre in canton Valais is just right, between seasons It’s too cold out for summer rosés, I’m getting tired of winter reds, and we wanted something besides white last weekend. We opted for a lovely wine, Pradezian, a blanc de noir from Maurice Zufferey in Muraz, above Sierre in […]
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Sagrantino’s technical tamers
Third in a 4-part series How to make great wine despite astringent tannins If a wine has strong tannins, you cellar it until it becomes drinkable, right? That’s one step, but there is quite a lot more to getting a good wine from grapes with very strong tannins. Sicily’s Nero d’Avola is the grape I’ve […]
Best of Sagrantino
part 2 of 3 articles on Montefalco’s Sagrantino wines Montefalco’s top wines: my picks A note about prices: the Montefalco Rossos, which are blends, vary from about €10 to 15 (cellar prices), sometimes higher for reserves, and in Europe you can expect to pay anywhere from €18 to 40 for Sagrantino wines, with higher prices […]
A hot French love affair
Organic wine, the new mistress of the French heartland – beautifully seductive and the hottest girl in town or country. Everybody wants to have her, and to listen to the marketing spiels, everybody’s got her. Whew, what a dame! But French mistresses have a reputation for artifice. I’ve been keen to see for myself to […]
Back from Merlot judging
Two days of judging Merlot wines in Sierre at the Mondial du Merlot prompted reflection on a number of points. The quality of the wine was overall good to very good, with a few exceptions for wines where the cellar needs to do more work. My own table of five judges had one “great gold” […]