The Winery Val des Ollivets of Unknow region

‘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 ...

Tina Gellie, Content Manager and Regional Editor (Australia, South Africa, New Zealand & Canada) It was a big year of Decanter travel for me, heading to Napa and New York in June, South Africa in October and most recently a week each in Margaret River and South Australia. These trips have formed the basis of my festive selections. Christmas lunch on North Stradbroke Island (reunited with my family after four years, no thanks to Covid) always starts with oysters, followed by a bucket of prawn ...

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 ...