The Domaine Mas Sours of Unknow region

Bordeaux has a history of extraordinary women running vineyards. In Sauternes & Barsac Françoise-Joséphine d’Yquem was imprisoned twice during the French revolution but managed to save both her neck and Château d’Yquem, 1er Grand Cru Classé Supérieur Sauternes. She then dedicated herself to her property, and introduced the practice of ‘tries successives’ or multiple passes through the vineyard during harvest to collect botrytised grapes at maximum maturity, transforming the quality of wines ...

‘When I started producing wine, the wineries were all in a very bad condition,’ said Askaneli Brothers president Gocha Chkhaidze, recalling the poor state of the Georgian wine industry shortly after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘There was inadequate sanitation, a lack of know-how and old-fashioned bottling lines. People were unable to make wine sustainably, vineyards were not sufficiently cared for, agronomists were unskilled and used to harvest the maximu ...

It had been possible to produce sparkling wines in Rioja, certified as DO Cava, since the creation of Spain’s main sparkling wine entity. But this fact was often unknown to consumers given that 95% of Cava is produced in the Catalunya region. The area for production of Cava in Rioja is however limited to only 18 of the nearly 150 municipalities within the entire DO zone. In a bid to better show point of origin, the new subzone labelling of Cava that was approved in 2021 now refers to the p ...