Wines made from Xarello grapes of Rioja

Shafer Vineyards has been sold to Shinsegae Property, a division of the wider Shinsegae Group, with interests in several business sectors, from retail to real estate. Shinsegae Property acquired the trailblazing Napa winery for 299.6 South Korean won ($250m), according to the Korea Herald newspaper. Further details about the deal were not disclosed, but the newspaper quoted a company official as saying the deal would benefit Shinsegae L&B, a wine and alcoholic drinks wholesale and importing ...

Some Châteauneufs are more reliable than others. When I visit the region to taste the new vintage every year, Domaine de la Janasse’s cuvée Vieilles Vignes regularly features among the best. It’s a particularly dense and concentrated wine when young, and it always strikes me that, even for Châteauneuf, it’s a wine that needs extended ageing to show its best. I was keen to acquire a more complete understanding of how this cuvée develops, so I visited brother-and-sister team Isabelle and Christoph ...

Franzese was known as the ‘yuppie don’ in the 1980s after rising to the rank of caporegime in the Colombo crime family. Fortune Magazine placed him at No. 18 on its 50 Biggest Mafia Bosses list, and he gained a reputation as one of the mob’s biggest earners since Al Capone. He was portrayed by Joseph Bono in Goodfellas. Franzese became a born-again Christian during a lengthy prison sentence for racketeering, and he managed to walk away from the mafia without going into protective custody. He is ...