Our staff love Italy and love Italian wine. Italy is a big wine producer with lots of varieties and regional specialties; we get so many questions in the store just because there is so much to taste. Here is a short summary of Northern, Central and Southern Italy from our team which may help steer your next wine purchase in one director or another.
Our access to their wines continues to improve and I was able to taste across the entire 2019 range in October 2020 with Benoît. 2019 is undoubtedly a vintage which would sit in the “sunny” category; the fruit character certainly sits more on the “stone fruit” end of the spectrum than the “citrus fruit” end. However, what is so impressive about the 2019s, and particularly those at Domaine Droin, is that there remains a noticeable Chablis mineral character as well as clear imprint of each vineyard.
Everything about Diamond Creek can be considered pioneering. When Al Brounstein bought virgin land on the forested hills south of Calistoga, it was considered too cool to grow any wine grapes let alone Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact the idea of mountain Cabernet hadn’t crystallised yet and wouldn’t do so until Randy Dunn started releasing Howell Mountain wines in the late 70s...
The month of February has arrived at Philglas & Swiggot and we decided to celebrate the German wine industry and some favourite producers of ours that we work with. Our ‘Focus on Germany’ highlights the quality of the best German wines we tasted this year, all of which just blew our minds!
