Italians hate simplicity. They abhor it as vampires do garlic. Consider the case of Montepulciano, one of Italy’s more interesting grape varietals. It shares its name with a village in Tuscany which makes one of the country’s great wines, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Any reasonable person might suppose that Vino Nobile was made from the Montepulciano grape. They would be wrong. The Noble Wine of Montepulciano is actually made from Sangiovese. It may contain lesser amounts of Canaiolo, Mammolo and Trebbiano. Occasionally it even contains some Gamay. But the one grape you will never find in it is Montepulciano.

Indeed, the Montepulciano grape is scarcely known in Tuscany. Its real home is Abruzzo, on the Adriatic. This province is less fashionable than Tuscany, though no less beautiful and with as much to offer. The same is true of its wines.  The best of these is Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a big, fleshy red that really is made from the Montepulciano grape. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the charms of wine drinking nowadays is its endless cosmopolitanism. Regular visitors to this blog will have read about Burgundy from New Zealand, Bordeaux from South Africa, Gewürztraminer from Italy and Margaux from New York State. Now we have a delightful Rhône wine from South Australia.

Of course none of these copies is perfect. And the makers would no doubt protest that they are not trying to create doppelgängers of the French classics. But in that case, one is bound to ask what they are doing. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I discussed a winery that has been in business for about 10 years. This week’s was founded over 1800 years ago. Château Figeac is by far the oldest property of St Emilion, in Bordeaux. It was originally called the Figeacus estate, and its early history is veiled in fog.

We do not know when its owners first grew wine. In 92 AD the Emperor Domitian issued an edict prohibiting the planting of new vines, and this remained in force until 212. But it is not clear how strictly the edict was enforced outside Italy.

The name too is mysterious. “Figeacus” may be the family name of the estate’s first owners, but it may also be a corruption of ficus, meaning “fig-tree”. Read the rest of this entry »

“What does this remind you of?” I asked Mrs Merry Drinker the other night.

She took a sip, then looked at me doubtfully. “Not . . .?”

“Go on.”

“Uh . . . Margaux?”

Margaux is my wife’s favourite wine, and I could understand her hesitation. What we were drinking was definitely not Margaux. It wasn’t even a Bordeaux. It was from Long Island, New York. Read the rest of this entry »