The Winery La Chiave of Unknow region

Annual domestic gas bills in the UK threaten to rival, in craziness, the price of a box of Bordeaux first growths. Those energy costs have sent the price of almost everything else ripping up after them. Is there, um, anything to be said for cheap wine? There is. First, though, we must sip the bitter harvest of alcohol taxes. These are high in the UK and higher still in Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and India; they tend to vary by state in the US and by province in Canada, and in general th ...

‘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 ...

Since February 24th 2022 the world has quickly learned a great deal more about Europe’s second-largest country, Ukraine. Most notably will be our profound admiration for the Ukrainians’ continued resistance to the invading Russian Army. This is but one item on a long list that includes such things as Ukraine being one of the world’s top exporters of wheat, barley and sunflower seeds. However, many people are also now learning that Ukraine not only has a thriving winemaking sect ...