Recioto is a typical term in the northern Italian Veneto, used for a wine produced from rosinated grapes – in the remaining areas of Italy, such a wine is called Passito. The name Recioto goes back to the local dialect which names the external grapes of the vine as Recie, which at least in earlier times, exclusively were used to produce this kind of sweet wine.
Around 70% of South Tyrolean wines are produced by cooperatives, which belong to the pioneers of quality development. At this year’s wine trip to South Tyrol, the Winery Bolzano was on our visit program. The new construction of the winery has not only caused a stir architecturally. With around 40 million €, this is the most expensive investment in the wine sector in South Tyrol so far. 220 members of the cooperative are growing vines around Bolzano and manage … Read more ...
At our Italian evening Hans and I agreed in the judgment of the Muffato della Sala 2011 by Castello della Sala: In the nose like Sauternes, on the palate somehow stronger, the sweetness a bit too noticeable, there are some similarities with Passito, nevertheless no Passito – in short one very good, original Italian sweet wine.
The Castello della Sala, a winery owned by the Antinori family, is located near Orvieto. There, on soils infused with fossils, loamy, … Read more ...
A round trip in Andalusia was on the program of our friends and neighbors, including some days were planned in Málaga. So I asked Heinz and Mausi to bring me a sweet Málaga wine, emphasizing that type, age, sweetness and style are not important at all, just the first sweet Málaga wine they see.
For sweet Málaga wines it is not easy to reconcile the manifold nomenclatures. There is Vino de licor, Vino de uvas sobremaduradas and Vino … Read more ...
Santorini is not only known for its white-blue postcard idylls, but also for the Vinsanto, a sweet wine from the white grapes Assyrtiko, Aidani and Athiri. Less known, however, is a red sweet wine of Santorini, made purely from the variety Mandilaria. A wine of this type, the Apiliotis from the Domaine Sigalas, Alex had brought as a gift from his original home, when he was our guest for dinner together with his wife and children.
Both … Read more ...
On the western foothills of the Massif de Jura, along the road N 83, there is, in an altitude of about 200 to 400 meters, the approximately 650 hectares large wine-growing area Côtes du Jura. In a semi-continental, rather cool and with about 1100 mm annual precipitation also rather wet climate, there are produced about 25,000 hectoliters of wine per year, mainly (~ 2/3) white wine, the rest red wine, Vin Jaune and also about 550 hectoliters of Vin … Read more ...
The baroque splendor of Noto is known beyond the borders of Sicily. Less known, however, is the Moscato di Noto from the variety Moscato Bianco pressed. The variety is quite common in Italian sweet wines. The Moscato di Noto is often sweet – but it is also traded in a dry version. In the regulations of the DOC Noto the sweetness of the wine is not determined, only aromatic and varietal should the Moscato di Noto be.
Exactly to the … Read more ...
From Ticino to Aargau our Swiss wine tour led us this year in June. We also got to know the Räuschling, an indigenous Swiss grape variety, of which only 25 hectares are cultivated worldwide, 18 hectares of which at Lake Zurich. The parents of the grape variety are the grape varieties White Heunisch, also known as Gouais Blanc or Gwäss as well as the vine named in the Jura Savagnin Blanc and in Switzerland Heida. Gouais… Read more ...
Since 2010 the Ruché di Castagnole Monferrato has a separate DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) although the grape variety, so to speak, was rediscoveredonly in the 1970s in Piedmont. Its then discoverer, Father Don Giacomo Cauda, was so taken with the quality, body, aromas, flavors and aromas of the wines of his ten rows of ruché vines that he not only cultivated more of this variety, but even to inspire winemaker to increase plantings of it. Already in 1987 there was the DOC status, which at that time as well as today and also in case of the DOCG
One third of the South Tyrolean winegrowing areas can be found in the Unterland winegrowing zone, which is the largest of the seven winegrowing areas in South Tyrol. The region Unterland is also the warmest and extends from Altenburg, about 5 km north of Tramin, along the Adige River to the Salurner Klause, the German-Italian language border. The Unterland also has the highest vineyards in South Tyrol. At an altitude of 1,000 m, the grapes for a well-known dry wine from South Tyrol, Feldmarschall von Fenner, ripen on the Fennberg near Kurtatsch. The proximity to Lake Garda with its mild climatic