The flavor of clay pot in wine of Don Valley

It was the 5th of March and the second week of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. That morning, Mykhailo and Georgiy Molchanov, the father and son team of the Slivino winery in the Mykolaiv Oblast in Southern Ukraine went out to prune their vineyard. Lodged in one row of the vines was an unexploded Russian missile from a ‘Grad’ launcher. Meaning ‘hail’ in Russian, the name refers to the BM-21 systems that indiscriminately launch up to 20 of these missiles at once, something that has become a ...

The French shipment of 600 bottles of De Haartman & Co Cognac – plus 15 boxes of Bénédictine liqueur – is believed to have been destined for Tsar Nicholas II, but was intercepted in the Baltic Sea and sunk by a German submarine in May 1917. Now Cognac house Birkedal Hartmann has refilled 300 of the recovered bottles with Cognac dating from the early 1900s, using packaging identical to the original, and is selling them for €9,000 each. The wreck of the SS Kyros was discovered by Swedish explo ...

After a two-year hiatus imposed by the global pandemic, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) is hosting its 43rd annual congress this week in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. There is a sense of celebration among participants, but the joy of sitting around the same table again is clouded by urgency and worry as the industry faces significant challenges. The congress, a key event in the wine industry’s calendar, brings together a unique mix of stakeholders, including producers, ...