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Tuscan Wine: The Next generation
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Italy's Cooperatives: Giant footsteps
With a renewed emphasis on quality not quantity, Italy's cooperatives have been forced to review their output. NICOLAS BELFRAGE picks the winners
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Taking on Umbria, Tuscany
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Master craftsmen: Barolo wine
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Tuscan delights
NICOLAS BELFRAGE MW discovers the best winemakers in Tuscany
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Italy's Southern Stars: Wine revolution
The winds of change now blow across the long-neglected heel of Italy's boot, claims NICOLAS BELFRAGE MW. Not a year ago I, like many observers of the Puglian wine scene, was still somewhat sceptical about its prospects. We wondered what was going to become of quality Puglian wine after the Garofano era. Severino Garofano, readers of these pages will recall, is the consultant oenologist who almost single-handedly pulled Puglia out of the vinous dark ages, bringing the concept of fine bottled wine to this land of enormous production; practically all of it, historically, plonk: bulk wine, produced in vast quantities in tendone-trained vineyards for the making of vermouths, or in lesser but still considerable quantities from old alberello- (bush) trained vines capable of bringing forth wines of great colour, alcohol and extract for blending with weedy Tuscan Sangioveses or piss-poor southern French pinard.
