Top 100 red wines of Spoleto

Severe drought in northern Italy has led to the country’s government declaring a state of emergency in several regions, including Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto. Funds of €36.5m (£31m) would be made available to these regions for drought relief, the government said. Agriculture body Coldiretti said last week that the Po river, which flows across northern Italy to the Adriatic Sea, was almost unrecognisable. Drought in the Po Valley threatened around 30% of n ...

Strong demand for Château Lynch-Bages wines from collectors in Europe, US and Asia helped ensure all 342 lots in the London-based auction were sold, said Sotheby’s. Total sales at the 25 March event hit £877,826 ($1.16m), eclipsing a pre-sale high estimate of just under £700,000. It’s another sign of a strong auction market, and of Lynch-Bages’ popularity; this Pauillac-based Bordeaux estate owned by the Cazes family has long been known for punching above its fifth growth status in the 1855 Clas ...

I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...