The flavor of persimmon in wine of Samburesti

I’d visited Kakheti, Kartli and Imereti before – Georgia’s dominant central wine-producing zones; but never the wild exterior. From the ice-crisped cemetery grass of the 11th-century church of St George, dominating the mountaintop village of Mravaldzali, we looked north across the mountains of the Greater Caucasus, Europe’s highest. The silence, and the vista, was daunting. Hundreds of dry, drab valleys lost themselves in as many snowy peaks. Russia lay beyond. There was, apparently, a way over: ...

Spanish judges handed out prison terms to Priscila Guevara, a former Mexican beauty contestant, and her Dutch-Romanian partner, Constantín Dumitru, after the pair went on trial in Madrid over the restaurant wine heist. Guevara, 28, and Dumitru, 49, were sentenced to four years and four-and-a-half years in prison respectively, reported Spanish newspaper El Pais. They were also ordered to pay insurers more than €750,000 in damages. The couple, who lived in Madrid, were arrested in Croatia nine mon ...

A man and woman carried out the ‘meticulously planned’ theft at the Atrio hotel and restaurant in western Spain back in October. They made off with a bottle of 1806 Château D’Yquem and a large haul of Domaine de la Romanée Conti after breaking into Atrio’s famous cellar. That sparked a nine-month international manhunt. Police in Spain teamed up with Interpol and Europol, plus authorities in Romania and the Netherlands, to track a pair of suspects down. They eventually swooped on a 29-year-old Me ...