Wines made from Primitivo grapes of Valais
Discover the best wines made with Primitivo as a single variety or as a blend of Valais.
From Croatia where it is called crljenak kastelanski or pribidrag. According to genetic analyses carried out by Professor Carole Meredith of California University in Davis (United States), it is related to the Croatian plavac mali and Zinfandel. It is also found in South Africa, New Zealand, Chile, Brazil, Germany, Bulgaria, Albania, Italy under the name of Primitivo, Malta, Greece, Portugal and to some extent in Croatia. In the United States (California), it is one of the most widely planted grape varieties, having been introduced in the 1830s well before Primitivo. In France, it is registered in the official catalogue of vine varieties on the A1 list under the name Primitivo.
The Valais is the largest wine region and appellation in Switzerland, responsible for around one third of the country's total wine production. The main Vineyard area covers the southeast-facing slopes of the dramatic Rhône river valley as the glacial waters run southwest between Leuk (Loeche in French) and Fully. The river changes direction at Martigny and then runs northwest to exit the valley and empty into Lac Léman (Lake Geneva). Vineyard area here comes to around 4,800 hectares (11,800 acres) and is generally located on (often steep) slopes and terraces between the flat, fertile, Heavy soils at the bottom of the valley - often given over to fruit production, industry and urban development - and the bare rock of the mountainside that towers above.
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 ...
Direct-to-consumer (DtC) wine shipments dropped by 10.3% in volume and by 1.6% in value in the US in 2022, according to the latest report from Sovos ShipCompliant and Wines Vines Analytics. It’s the first drop in drinkers buying wines direct from US wineries in the report’s 13-year history. Yet DtC still accounted for around 12% of the total retail market (off-premise) for domestic wines, level with 2021. ‘After the all-time high of $4.2bn in value that the DtC shipping channel experienced ...
Château Lafleur 2021 was released in the Bordeaux en primeur campaign this morning (27 May) at the equivalent of £6,508 (12x75cl in bond), according to Liv-ex. This sought-after Pomerol label, produced from a vineyard of just 4.5 hectares, is often sold in smaller quantities and sometimes only on allocation. UK merchant Justerini & Brooks was offering three-bottle cases of Lafleur 2021 for £1,627 in bond at the time of writing. Decanter’s Georgie Hindle gave Lafleur 2021 97 points, naming it ...