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Current topics, themes, musings and travel notes

At a recent Timorasso tasting Bisso Atassanov right and Colli Tortonesi pres, Gian Paolo Repetto left and tasting hist Diego Sorba center

How’d this Piedmontese white grape get to Southern Ukraine’s front?

Timorasso has gone from near extinction to a hot somm secret. Now it’s leaking out to the world in some disparate places.

Jonathan Sack of Clos Ste Magdeleine in his Vermentino vineyard

Don’t call it Ver----------!

French Vermentino is having a deserved boom. Too bad they’ve got to call it something else.

Brunello Cucinelli overlooking vineyard

Philosophy and beauty. (And wine too)

Inside Brunello Cucinelli’s ultra-boutique red wine

Matteo and Simone of Benedetti La Villa

Lunch with Bacchus! (Sort of)

A pair of Valpo vintners pairs wine (and food) with unearthed spectacular Roman mosaics

Carlo Mondavi and Giovanna Bagnasco at their Sori della Sorba vineyard

A Mondavi’s Italian Dream

Carlo Mondavi and wife Giovanna launch a boutique winery in their Piemontese “heaven”

Calvarino's 50th anniversary tasting Dario Pieropan wine educator Filippo Bartolotta MW Gabriele Gorelli, Andrea Pieropan

Fifty Years of Superb Soave

Pieropan’s Calvarino should be one of the coolest whites you’re drinking

Steve Matthiasson

California’s real Alt- wine scene

We expect California to think different. Same with its winemakers

California grocer Darrell Corti

Super Darrell

How the Sacramento grocer developed his global influence and following

Tegan Passalacqua (left) with Morgan Twain-Peterson in the 19th-century Nervo vineyard south of Geyserville

CA’s Old Vineyard Heroes

Promoting the wildly varied vines of pre-Prohibition days

Renato De Bartoli

Sicily’s “Unfinished Poem”

A return to Sicily’s Marsala and Az. Marco De Bartoli

Prince of a guy

A solitary life and compelling wines in NW Sicily

Tessari Sisters

Q: Do you know Suavia?

You should!

giuseppe vaira

Alt. Barolo anyone?

A winemaking journey through time and bubbles

A Verona salumeria window

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

Romeo, Juliet and Valpolicella

Running the Light Red

Grignolino is a food-friendly Piedmont red coming back into appreciation

Listen up!

South of Somewhere comes to audible

The Viking’s last chapter in Sicily

Peter Vinding-Diers should be richer and more famous.

Urban Holiday Wine Stress

Do you suffer from U.H.W.S.? Take heart.

Meaningful Prosecco?

A new generation from Northern Italy returns the popular fizz to its roots

Nobility, Crime and a Great Little Pizza Wine

On Campania’s endangered monster vines

Campania’s Fiano maestro Roberto di Meo

Going Deeper Into the South

From Taormina Gourmet to Campania’s Fiano maestro Roberto di Meo

Into the volcano

Around the surreal landscape of Naples

From Prosecco Wars to Pingus

My new column covers an old battle, and my latest feature on one of the world’s most fascinating winemakers.

My cousin Vittoria Aiello with Marisa Cuomo and husband Andrea Ferraioli

Getting nostalgic for the future

Being a conservative progressive isn’t a contradiction when it comes to food, wine and life in Italy

Etna keeps erupting

The volcano continues to catch young winemaking dreams

Ice it !

In Summer, forget the ridiculous concept of red wine at “room temperature”

Lucio Tasca d’Almerita

The Last Leopard

Lucio Tasca d’Almerita (1940-2022)

The Mustilli sisters Paola and Anna Chiara in Falanghina vineyards

It’s Hot.

Hell Yeah. What to do ?

Hiking on Saint Pierre and Miquelon France's last archipilego off North America

From the South of Italy to way way north in the Atlantic

Did I say Canada?

California Diaries 2022

New wave producers with Italian Grapes in the Golden state

A Napa Son under Umbrian Sun

Just before Covid Rollie Heitz moved to Umbria and is making wine. He hasn’t looked back.

South by South

More travels and new experiences from Campania to Puglia

Louis Lucas in Lucas and Lewellen old Carrari vineyard

Hey To Santa Barbara and Back to Italy

What I learned from diving into California's Italian-inspired vineyards

More California Meets Italy

A tale of two guys who have nothing in common, except for…

Franco Allegrini

Passing of a great winemaker and friend

Franco Allegrini was one of Northern Italy’s most influential winemakers

Southern Italian Grapes in the New World

Italian varieties in California simply make sense

Back to the Old World

And the Italian edition of South of Somewhere

Robert with Shelley Lindgren at A16 San Francisco

Wrapping it up in the West

This spring has not felt like work, truthfully.

West Coast Bound

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to California, and I am looking to return on Monday.

The Fiano view from Feudi di San Gregorio's winery in Sorbo Serpico

Welcome to Fiano February

Come along for the ride

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