There is something quietly defiant about Saale-Unstrut. At 51 degrees north, this is one of the most northerly traditional wine regions in the world – a place where vines cling to sun-warmed limestone terraces, where medieval monasteries gave shape to viticulture over a thousand years ago, and where a bottle of wine from a local…
There is a moment, driving north from Verona along the Adige valley, when the landscape changes quite suddenly. The broad flatlands of the Veneto give way to a narrowing gorge, the road is pressed between river and rock face, and the vineyards begin to climb the slopes in terraces that were cut out of the…
There is a saying, attributed to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, that captures this corner of Germany better than any wine guide could. Passing through the region in 1764, he reportedly remarked: “This is where Germany begins to become Italy.” Whether or not the quote is apocryphal, the sentiment holds. The Hessische Bergstraße runs along…
Southern Italy has no shortage of wine regions with serious credentials, but few feel as raw, sun-baked, and genuinely rewarding to explore as Puglia. Stretching down the heel of the Italian boot between the Adriatic and Ionian seas, this long, flat region produces more wine than almost anywhere else in the country, and for most…
There is a particular pleasure in discovering a wine region that does not shout for attention. The Nahe has never had the romantic marketing pull of the Mosel, with its postcard-steep riverbanks and tourist boats, nor the polished prestige of the Rheingau. What it has instead is something arguably more interesting: a geological complexity that…
There is a particular pleasure in arriving somewhere you did not expect to be moved by. Most wine lovers have a mental map of Germany that runs through the Mosel, the Rheingau, maybe the Pfalz, regions that have done a good job of publicising themselves. Franken rarely appears on that map, yet it is one…
Italy’s only landlocked region sits in quiet defiance of its own obscurity. Umbria shares a border with Tuscany to the north and west, occupies the geographic centre of the peninsula, and has been growing vines on its clay-limestone hills since at least the Etruscan era. Yet it rarely appears on the itineraries of wine travellers…
When most people think of German wine, the mind defaults to Riesling from the Mosel, those steep slate slopes plunging toward the river. But Germany has another story to tell, one written further south, warmer, richer, and unmistakably shaped by the Pinot family. Baden is that story. Stretching nearly 400 kilometres from Heidelberg in the…
Most people arrive in the Veneto for Venice or Verona and leave without fully registering what they have driven through. Between those two cities alone, the landscape holds some of the most varied and genuinely important wine-producing territory in Italy. Limestone ridges rising north of Verona, volcanic basalt slopes east of the city, fog-shrouded plains…
The Rhine Bends and Greatness Begins There is a moment when you drive the Riesling Route west from Wiesbaden and the Rhine suddenly opens up beneath you, wide and silver-grey, the slopes dropping sharply to the water’s edge. Vines cling to those terraces in long, disciplined rows. Castles break the treeline. And somewhere in the…