Wines made from Chasselas grapes of Italy

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking up at some terraced vineyards in St-Joseph with an Australian friend. He remarked that he’d never seen a steep vineyard like this in his home country. Who could afford to rip out the trees, build the access roads, construct the terraces, and plant the vines, without being certain beforehand that the resulting wine could be sold at prices high enough to recoup the investment? It might not be the most romantic way of looking at it. But that’s the modern reality ...

These styles are produced via biological ageing, which involves the formation of a veil of flor yeast on top of the barrel during maturation. Such flor is responsible for the development of these wines’ unique flavours and texture and is therefore generally understood to be an integral part of their terroir expression. ‘We have dual terroir,’ said Barbadillo vineyard manager Catina Aveledo, ‘the vineyard terroir and the bodega terroir, which is about the air (temperature, humidity and circulatio ...

The spirit was filled into a single ex-Sherry cask at the Speyside distillery in 1940, shortly before The Second World War forced The Macallan to close for the first time in its history. Bottled at 41.6% abv, only 288 decanters are available worldwide, featuring eye-catching packaging: a mouth-blown glass decanter sitting on a bronze sculpture of three hands, created by Scottish artist Saskia Robinson. The hands represent the distillery workers of 1940 who made the whisky; former Macallan chairm ...