Lombardy is one of Italy's largest and most populous regions, located in the north-central Part of the country. It's home to a handful of popular and well-known wine styles, including the Bright, cherry-scented Valtellina and the high-quality Sparkling wines Franciacorta and Oltrepo Pavese Metodo Classico. Lombardy is Italy's industrial powerhouse, with the country's second largest city (Milan) as its regional capital. Despite this, the region has vast tracts of unspoiled countryside, home to many small wineries that produce a significant portion of the region's annual wine production of 1.
2 million hectoliters. A vast and geographically Complex region, Lombardy is well positioned to offer a wide range of wine styles. There are five DOCGs, 21 DOCs and 15 PGIs. The Oltrepo Pavese area stands out as one of the most important and best known, not only for its sparkling wine Oltrepo Pavese Metodo Classico DOCG, but also, more recently, for its Pinot Grigio, which since 2008 has its own independent DOC (Oltrepo Pavese Pinot Grigio).
Franciacorta, the second of Lombardy's two DOCG sparkling wines, comes from the booming and highly regarded vineyards between Brescia and Lake Iseo.
Pinot noir is an important red grape variety in Burgundy and Champagne, and its reputation is well known! Great wines such as the Domaine de la Romanée Conti elaborate their wines from this famous grape variety, and make it a great variety. When properly vinified, pinot noit produces red wines of great finesse, with a wide range of aromas depending on its advancement (fruit, undergrowth, leather). it is also the only red grape variety authorized in Alsace. Pinot Noir is not easily cultivated beyond our borders, although it has enjoyed some success in Oregon, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
Andrea Franchetti, one of the most talented and visionary Italian producers, has died at the age of 72 in Rome. In 30 years exactly, he positioned his superTuscan Trinoro among the top Italian references, producing a wine with stylish elegance and outstanding potential for ageing. Franchetti’s Bordeaux blends were without the over-extractions that were on-trend in the 2000s, nor the excess of fruit following phenolic maturity. He followed a precise idea to produce classic wines for the long haul ...
The Champagne 2022 harvest has begun and picking start dates have been set for the majority of villages, the Comité Champagne has announced. Individual harvest start dates are set for each village and grape variety in the entire Champagne region. This year, dates range between 20 August (Montgueux in the Côte des Blancs) and 6 September (Dormans Soilly in the Vallée de la Marne). The Réseau Matu, a network of hundreds of vineyard control plots, is used to observe the ripening of grapes across th ...
Gusbourne has launched Fifty One Degrees North English sparkling wine from the 2014 vintage at £195 per bottle, which is thought to make it the most expensive so far released. Some others aren’t too far behind – Nyetimber’s 1086 rosé 2010 is £175 – yet Gusbourne’s move reinforces a sense of ambition within the UK wine world to be a regular fixture at this prestige cuvée level. Fifty One Degrees North, named after the position of Gusbourne’s vineyards in Kent and West Sussex, is a ble ...
