Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Decanter

 ■ A couple who stole 45 bottles of rare wine from Atrio restaurant and hotel in Cáceres, Spain, in October 2021 have been sentenced to prison. A Spanish court also ordered the pair to pay €753,000 (£660,000) in damages, equal to compensation paid to the then two-star Michelin restaurant by its insurance company, reported CNN, citing court documents. The wines, including a bottle of Château d’Yquem 1806, have not been recovered.  ■ Thousands of hectares of vines could be pulled up across the Bordeaux region, via a ‘sanitary’ grubbing-up scheme jointly financed by the French state and the CIVB (Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux). It aims to curb overproduction and help growers in economic difficulty. ‘These tools put us in a position to pull out 9,500ha of vines in…

Third-generation winemaker Gianlorenzo Picollo (picolloernesto.it), 47, never left the land. His family’s 16ha straddle three communes: Rovereto (with vineyards up to 80 years old), Tassarolo and Francavilla. ‘My father Ernesto and I began bottling our wine in 1994. Since then, the quality of Gavi has improved significantly. It’s unique, unrivalled wine that typifies our terroir.’ Picollo has firm ideas: stainless steel vats only, whole-bunch pressing, and a fully functional business with a cutting-edge cellar. He produces about 125,000 bottles, of which 90% are exported. Picollo prepares a vertical tasting of Gavi DOCG Rovereto for me, starting with the 2016. A distinctive leitmotif runs through the different vintages: freshness, finesse, verticality and length. At La Mesma (lamesma.it), Paola Rosina says: ‘My father, a seafaring shipowner, chose Monterotondo in Gavi as his…

ANTONIO CAMILLO, MONTEMERANO Organic grower/non-interventionist winemaker Antonio Camillo has dedicated the past 15 years to searching out small plots of native old vines on the high slopes of the least-exploited southeast corner of the DOCG. He is best known for his Ciliegiolo, but Camillo’s Morellino is also outstanding. @antoniocamilloviniditerritorio CANTINA VIGNAIOLI DEL MORELLINO DI SCANSANO, SCANSANO This quality-oriented cooperative celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022. With 170 members and 700ha of vineyard, the Cantina is the denomination’s largest producer. An extensive range includes a number of single-site selections of Morellino. vignaiolidiscansano.it I CAVALLINI, MANCIANO The Perozzi family have been making wine for three generations on this 350ha estate, where they are among the very few to maintain the tradition of mixed agriculture, today practised with a nod towards Steinerian biodynamics.…

1 Ettore Germano, Blanc de Noirs Riserva Pas Dosé 2015 97 £54 Astrum Wine Cellars 54, Field & Fawcett, Sociovino Grown on south-facing chalky soils at around 550m, this 100% Pinot Nero is part-fermented in 500L French oak barrels and, once bottled, spends some 65 months on its lees before disgorgement. Impressively well balanced and aromatic, it shows a majestic, almost decadent richness of flavour and should continue to improve for at least another five years. Drink 2025-2035 Alcohol 12.5% 2 Pecchenino, Psea Brut Zero 2018 93 £30.40 Tannico †Grown on chalky soils at about 700m at Pezzea near Bossolasco, this two-thirds Pinot Nero, one-third Chardonnay blend illustrates how beautifully the two varieties work together. Round, full and perfumed, with an earthy, mineral-toned palate, it features a light but balanced…

The lightest style of tequila, blanco is also known as silver or plata. Expect plenty of pure agave character from these tequilas, which are perfect for making classic cocktails such as the Margarita and Paloma. 1 Calle 23 Blanco £35.30-£42/70cl Amathus Drinks, Amazon, Hedonism, Master of Malt, StarmoreBoss, The Good Spirits Co, The Whisky Exchange The Calle 23 brand was created by Sophie Decobecq, a French biochemist. She fell in love with Mexico and tequila when she went to the country on a work placement to research yeasts and lactic acid. The blanco is an excellent all-round mixing tequila, boasting notes of cooked agave, black pepper, spearmint, orchard fruits and pineapple. Alcohol 40% 2 Código 1530 Blanco £40.99-£49.99/70cl Amathus Drinks, Distillers Direct, Hedonism, Master of Malt, Selfridges, Spirits Kiosk, The…

Cucinapovera – Italian peasant cooking – is the way people have been cooking in Italy for centuries. This is not just a unique approach to cooking and ingredients; it’s the highest expression of the Italian arte dell’arrangiarsi – the art of making do with what you’ve got. Tuscany’s cucina povera is in my blood. I was born in the Tuscan countryside and raised in a traditional tight-knit family, with a mother and grandmother who applied the principles of the cuisine to our everyday meals. Traditional cucina povera dishes are immediately recognisable from some common traits: the use of humble ingredients, seasonal vegetables and simple cooking techniques, along with a healthy dose of imagination. It relies on basic, affordable ingredients that are available no matter where you live. Day-old bread and…

Dirceu Vianna Junior MW is a wine writer, consultant and educator. Moving to the UK from Brazil in 1989, he was a director at some of the UK’s top distributors, becoming a Master of Wine in 2008, then co-authoring the awarded Portugueselanguage book Conheça Vinhos (‘Understanding Wine’, Editora Senac) Federico Moccia is head sommelier at London private member’s club 67 Pall Mall. Originally from Brescia in northern Italy, he is an advocate for Italian wine, as well as a DWWA judge and a contributor to decanter.com Emma Robinson is a wine buyer covering Australia, New Zealand and South Africa at London-based merchant Enotria&Coe. She previously held positions in sales and export at Crush Wines then Bibendum Wine, where she was also a WSET wine educator…

Vie di Romans, Dessimis Pinot Grigio, Friuli Isonzo, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy 2021 £35-£48 London End Wines, Noble Green, Vinvm From two separate parcels, this food-friendly singlevineyard Pinot Grigio has a delicate strawberry scent bolstered by an intensely saline and mineral mouthful of spicy melon, pear, apple and apricot skin. JB Alc 14.5% Clendenen Family Vineyards, The Pip Chardonnay, Santa Maria Valley, California, USA 2019 £31.99 Wanderlust Wine A passion project of the late Jim Clendenen, best known for his Au Bon Climat wines, this opulent Chardonnay is laden with notes of smoky butterscotch, baked peaches and cream, and roasted hazelnuts. TG Alc 13.5% Paringa Estate, Peninsula Pinot Noir, Victoria, Australia 2021 £26.35 Shelved Wine Lindsay McCall is one of the Mornington Peninsula’s pioneers, and his wines are exemplars in…

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com  The last 12-18 months have proved another breakout period for blue-chip Burgundy prices (see chart above). We see this as largely driven by wealthy collectors and consumers within a broader trend of global growth in luxury consumption. Burgundy supply is limited and potentially becoming more so, as the 2021 vintage suggests; price performance is therefore a classic case of supply-demand dynamics. There is investment interest in Burgundy given price performance across the last five years, but we see this as very much secondary to collector activity. These positive dynamics – likely to persist, albeit with natural periods of price growth and…

RICHARD BAUDAINS is the DWWA Regional Chair for Veneto and a regular contributor to Decanter. He lives in northeast Italy, is on the Slow Wine Guide team for Friuli Venezia Giulia, and is a university wine journalism teacher ALDO FIORDELLI is a widely published journalist, wine writer and author, and a DWWA judge. He qualified as a sommelier in 2003, and in March 2022 received a special award from Tuscany’s Consorzio Cortona Vini ELIZABETH GABAY MW is a specialist in rosé and the wines of southern France. She is author of Rosé, Understanding the Pink Wine Revolution (Infinite Ideas, 2018), and co-author of Rosés of Southern France (£22 Amazon, July 2022) J’NAI GAITHER is a widely published food and wine writer, editor and educator. She was formerly assistant digital editor…

M attiaSpedicato, wine manager at Michelin three-star Geranium in Copenhagen (No1 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022 list), impressed producers last October in Sicily when he confessed that two-thirds of the restaurant’s wine list is dedicated to white wines: in the past, an old vintage of a Chardonnay, a Fiano or a Trebbiano was presumed unsellable as consumers were wary of white wines more than a year or two old. ‘Fine white wines are lacking in Italy,’ stated Antinori’s CEO Renzo Cotarella during the launch of a new top-shelf Chardonnay, Nibbio, produced at the company’s Umbrian estate Castello della Sala, also the source of the prestigious Cervaro della Sala. For me, the turning point in the perception of Italy’s fine whites was a decade ago. Frescobaldi released the 2013…

1 Celestina Fé 2020 95 celestinafe.com Moira Guerri (pictured above) grew up among the vines, assimilating a rural winemaking tradition that she transmits in wines of great natural sincerity from her 8ha organic estate. Her Morellino is 100% Sangiovese, vinified partly in vat, partly in large barrels, with spontaneous fermentation, extended maceration and long ageing. It’s a robust wine but has great elegance and complexity on the nose, fine tannins and a long finish of dark fruit and wild herbs. Drink 2023-2030 Alcohol 15% 2 ICavallini 2021 95 icavallini.it Nicola Perozzi divides his time between a medical practice in Rome and the family estate, where he produces Morellino from a blend of old-vine Sangiovese with Ciliegiolo and Alicante grown on hilltop organic sites. Aged exclusively in stainless steel vats, the…

A forceof the Adriatic, Croatia’s wines have been steadily drawing more and more attention to the already-popular tourist destination. And perhaps that’s in part because if you want to discover the country’s outstanding wines, then you seemingly have to pay a visit. Wine exports are indeed limited, as attested by the selection of wines that follows – but the unwavering drive for quality across Croatia’s wine regions in recent years isn’t. Its best results to date were achieved at the most recent Decanter World Wine Awards, where Croatian wines were awarded three Platinum and 16 Gold medals. But for the past three years the nation has maintained a high standard of success at the competition, specifically for its white wines produced with indigenous varieties. Four-time DWWA judge Simon J Woolf…

There’s white wine in the recipe, so it makes a lot of sense to drink the wine you’re going to cook with, unless you happen to have a bottle of dry white wine open. And although you could drink a red wine with the dish, it’s so saline that it will make most reds taste jarringly jammy. (You might get away with a Sicilian red such as a Frappato or Nerello Mascalese, but to be honest I’d prefer a Carricante if you’re thinking of that part of the world.) Looking elsewhere in Italy, I’d be inclined to plump for a crisp, intense Greco di Tufo or head up to the Veneto – the home of squid ink risotto – for a Soave, or a Pinot Grigio from the Alto Adige…

Arguably, en rama fits perfectly with our contemporary desires for artisanship and low intervention; these wines are a reminder of how fino and manzanilla used to be. En rama means ‘from the branch’, as in ‘the fruit picked from the tree’. Lovers of Sherry clamour to buy en rama bottlings when they’re released each May, having been bottled the previous month when flor – the layer of yeast that protects the wine from oxygen during barrel maturation and gives the wine its character – is at its most abundant. En ramas are often bottled unfined and unfiltered (and in tiny quantities), so can be cloudy in appearance. Yet, for wines in general, it is the use of cold stabilisation and sterile filtering that can strip out volatile components, yeasts, proteins,…

Michaela Morris is a wine writer, judge, educator and speaker. Based in Vancouver, she is a VIA Italian Wine Expert, and teaches about Italian wine across Canada and abroad Sara Bachiorri is in the buying team at merchant WoodWinters. A DWWA judge since 2013, Sara was formerly head sommelier at The Glasshouse in Kew, then Chez Bruce in southwest London, followed by a stint at Italian specialist merchant FortyFive10° Michelle Cherutti-Kowal MW is a widely published wine writer, consultant, educator and WSET lecturer. She is a regular judge and contributor for Decanter, and from 2023 is the DWWA Regional Chair for Tuscany…

O urstory begins in the southeastern strip of Piedmont that borders the province of Genoa in Liguria: this is Gavi wine country. The old Salt Route passed through here, following the Via Postumia Roman road on its way up to Pavia and ultimately the country’s far northeast; and in the 12th century, the small town of Gavi became a crucial defensive outpost for the Genoese, as evidenced by its imposing fortress. Here, a unique encounter takes place: the wind from the Ligurian sea, about 30km to the south, blows up to the snow-capped Apennines, caressing villages, castles and hills, woods and vineyards on its way and blessing the air with a special light. Sea, snow and light: the three distinguishing features of this area that seems suspended in time, permeated…

What a difference a year makes! My sense of déjà vu quickly disappeared as I tasted through the 2018s. These wines are nothing like the brawny 2017s; Brunellino (‘little Brunello’) was the expression being bandied around by the Italians. Conditions in 2018 are described as fresh. Following the prolonged drought of 2017, winter rains and snowfall replenished depleted reserves. Spring was cool and wet, encouraging vigorous vegetation. Hailstorms hit the southwest mid-July, with Col d’Orcia and Argiano losing 20% and 25% of production respectively. Recurring showers marked the summer. August was significantly cooler, especially towards the end of the month. September saw notable diurnal temperature differences, favourable for ripening Sangiovese. However, there were two periods of rain that prompted picking. Producers with holdings in both the north and south generally…

Untilat least the 1990s Piedmont was, perhaps surprisingly, best known for its sparkling wines. Nowadays, of course, thanks to the meteoric rise of Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera et al, the region is widely viewed as red wine country. This, however, ignores a strong history of producing bubbles that dates back to long before the middle of the 19th century, when Carlo Gancia began using the Champagne method (‘metodo classico’) to ferment Moscato grapes from vineyards near Asti. This practice in turn built on the local tradition going back to the 16th century of making ‘filtrato dolce’, a low-alcohol, bubbly and sweet white wine filtered through hessian sacks to block fermentation, which subsequently morphed into today’s Asti/Moscato d’Asti DOCGs. Though relatively new compared to other Italian denominations based on the metodo classico…

1 Bushmills The Causeway Collection 1997 Rum Cask £387-£395/70cl Amazon, Hard to Find Whisky, House of Spirits, Master of Malt, The Whisky Exchange, The Whisky World A showstopper thanks to the effortless complexity that comes with age. Tropical fruit, spice, honey and vanilla, alongside a silky texture that lasts and lasts. Expensive? Yes. A great whiskey? Also yes. Alcohol 46.2% 2 Dingle Lá Le Bríde Single Malt €85/70cl Dingle Distillery; widely available online in Ireland Dingle’s core single malt is a cracker, and this limited-edition Wheel of the Year release brings a fresh flavour dimension thanks to a rye cask finish: tangy berry fruit slathered in cream, punchy spice and an anise-note lift. Alc 50.5% 3 Jameson Single Pot Still £50-£57/70cl Amazon, Fairley’s, McSwiggans, The Crafty Vintner, The Sipster, The…

A TRIO OF SOUTH AFRICANS TINA GELLIE Last month, following UK importer Hallgarten & Novum Wines’ annual tasting, I caught up with three of its South African producers. Decanter has charted Samantha O’Keefe’s journey – including her recovery after the 2019 fires that destroyed her Lismore property in Greyton. While her Estate Reserve Syrah 2018 blew me away, it’s not yet available in the UK, so snap up a bottle of the Lismore, Estate Reserve Viognier 2021 (£49.95 Handford Wines) and revel in its heady jasmine and nectarine opulence. I could geek out for hours listening to Richard Kershaw MW talk about the fastidiousness with which he attacks every aspect of the winemaking process at his Elgin estate. The 2018 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are stunning, but the Kershaw, Clonal…

Bowler & Brolly, Winemaster’s Lot Classic Cuvée Brut, Hampshire, England NV £19.99 Aldi Twee name aside, this is a tasty fizz, with a steely line and firm green apple bite alongside racy acidity. At £5 more than Aldi’s reliable non-vintage Champagne, it’s not cheap but it showcases home-grown quality. TG Alc 12% Hermann J Wiemer, Dry Riesling, Finger Lakes, New York, USA 2019 £19.50 Wanderlust Wine A benchmark Finger Lakes Riesling, poised yet approachable, with lemon, ripe pear and melon. The palate is assertive, with a soft mineral backbone and a subtle oiliness underpinned by yellow apple, pineapple and tangerine. A bright finish, with salinity and vibrant acidity. IS Alc 13% Esporão, Quinta do Ameal Loureiro, Vinho Verde, Portugal 2020 £11.99-£16.95 Bon Coeur, Eton Vintners, Roberts & Speight, Wine Direct…

CRISTAL 2015 A mid- to late-April release of Louis Roederer’s Cristal 2015 was anticipated by UK-based distributor Maisons Marques et Domaines. Cristal has helped to lead expanded global demand for top Champagne, thanks to its brand strength and ‘amazing run’ in terms of quality, said Bordeaux Index’s Matthew O’Connell recently. BONNEAU DU MARTRAY Corney & Barrow said it would offer Domaine Bonneau du Martray 2020 wines en primeur from April. The Burgundy producer makes two wines, both grand cru: Corton-Charlemagne white and Corton red. ‘The red has made considerable progress over the years; the 2020 vintage is delicious,’ said Decanter’s Charles Curtis MW in 2021. BILLECART-SALMON, NICOLAS FRANCOIS 2008 Top cuvées from Champagne’s highly praised 2008 vintage have seen strong buyer demand on the market in recent years, merchants say.…

100 This famous wine’s 2020 vintage is a particular triumph, said Decanter Burgundy correspondent Charles Curtis MW, who awarded the full 100 points after tasting it alongside other DRC 2020 releases. ‘The texture is suitably firm and substantial, but there is astonishing elegance and freshness for such a torrid vintage,’ Curtis said. ‘This is everything you want Romanée-Conti to be.’ He said 6,003 bottles were made, also praising the ‘dizzying success’ of DRC’s Montrachet Grand Cru 2020 (98pts). DRC releases are strictly allocated, according to the winery’s exclusive UK agent Corney & Barrow.…

Inside a professional’s everyday life How did you get here? It all began with a long walk from Canterbury, Kent to Rome in 2000 – through wine-growing regions – where the passion set in. Shortly afterwards I joined Berkmann Wine Cellars in London, convincing my Italian then-boyfriend we would stay in the city for just 18 months – this evolved into 12 years. In 2013 we relocated to Montalcino, where I set up my wine business consultancy. To many it seemed crazy, but I knew the time was right and haven’t looked back. What’s the best thing about your job? The varied nature of it – ranging from securing export routes for producers, to strategic consultancy for start-ups, to marketing consultancy for estates in emerging regions, to scouting and on-territory…