The Winery Giuseppa Bettini of Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro of Émilie-Romagne

The small island of Gorgona, just off the coast of Livorno, isn’t your run-of-the-mill viticultural area – its main purpose is to serve as a penal colony. Not just any prisoner can reside on Gorgona, however. Up to 90 incarcerated men live on the island at a time, alongside 17 residents and a handful of police officers. Prisoners on the island are allowed to stay for a maximum of five years, which must conclude the end of their sentence. After Gorgona, the men are set free. Scroll down to see ta ...

You don’t need a state-of-the-art winery to make wine. You don’t need rows of pristine oak barrels. One thing you do need to make good wine is good vines. Have you ever asked yourself where all these vines come from? How do they find their way into the ground? It used to be easy. In the past, winemakers simply took cuttings from their vineyards, propagated them, and planted them in the ground. But phylloxera put a stop to that. What was a simple process acquired layers of complexity: winemakers ...

Low and no alcohol drinks are becoming increasingly popular in the UK, according to a new YouGov survey commissioned by The Portman Group, the industry self-regulatory body. Nearly one third of respondents said they chose low or no alcohol drinks on a ‘semi-regular’ basis, up from one in four in a similar survey a year earlier. Its results fit with analysis that consumer demand for ‘low and no’ drinks is growing strongly in several developed countries. Portman Group and YouGov define ...