The flavor of wild strawberries in wine of Terek Valley

There’s a reason why heavily-applied perfume ranks highly on most wine lovers’ list of pet peeves. It overpowers your senses, conceals aromas and distorts your perception of a wine. In professional tastings and wine exams the wearing of perfume is banned, if not thoroughly frowned upon. You just don’t do it. What then, if we applied the same logic to music, controlling the sounds we hear, or don’t hear, while tasting wine? There’s no doubt that a chaotic environment can clog your synapses, makin ...

With a production capacity of 691,000 litres, the Quinta do Ataíde winery in the Vilariça Valley will be exclusively used for unfortified wine production. The investment sum is triple the amount initially estimated back in 2018, and the winery is a key part of the company’s strategy to double premium unfortified wine sales by 2030. ‘Since the original plans were announced, we have decided to significantly increase the size of the facility as a result of our confidence in the growing demand ...

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: ...