This Week’s Latest Wine Headlines: June 13—June 18

Hello my friends. Hope all are doing well and staying healthy. Super important now that mask mandates and COVID protocols seem to becoming lifted in more and more areas. I know they are in my neck of the woods. It’s a simultaneous sigh of relief but also a source of anxiety. So, again, I urge you all to stay safe and healthy while venturing back out into the world.

There’s loads of fun stuff in this week’s newsletter—including some scandalous opinion pieces. (I’ll let you scroll through and figure out which.) And in shameless self-promotion, I’ve included an article by yours truly. (First link below.)

If you haven’t had time to check out the site lately, I did have two new posts this week—learn about a few ‘lesser known’ wine regions: Costières de Nîmes and Custoza.

Excellent. That’s me done. I’ll leave you all to it. Enjoy!

 

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50 years of Custoza : A Masterclass with Kerin O’Keefe

Custoza, if you’ve not heard of it, is located Northern Italy in the Provence of Verona—comprised of nine townships, named after village of Custoza, a hamlet of Sommacamapgna. The hills originate from glacial deposts between Verona and Lake Garda – massive amount of deposits created an incredibly complex and variable soil situation. The main soils are calcareous clay, interspersed with gravelly rocks and sand. It is this soil structure that greatly differentiates Custoza from surrounding DOCs. It is the soil that creates a uniqueness to the white wines produced, providing a savoriness that will make any doubter of the reality of ‘minerality’ a true believer.

Maps courtesy CONSORZIO di TUTELA del VINO CUSTOZA DOC
Maps courtesy of the Consorzio di Tutela del Vino Custoza DOC

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Costières de Nîmes

It’s listed under “other Rhone appellations” in our WSET Diploma book, given but a short few sentences of description—all of which, let’s face, it quite generic. “Lies between the Rhone and eastern Languedoc.” “Vines are grown on south-west facing slopes.” “Maximum permitted yield is 60 hL/ha.” “Most wines are good to very good.” Blah.

Costières de Nîmes is a lot more interesting than that.

Courtesy https://www.costieres-nimes.org/
Courtesy costieres-nimes.org

 

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This Week’s Latest Wine Headlines: June 6—June 11

Happy weekend, folks. Can a week go by fast and slow at the same time? It definitely has for me—and the amount of news gathered in this weekly round-up is a testament to that. In fact, there’s so much stuff, I’m just going to let you do your thing. Scroll through, read, learn, have some fun. And, as always, drink good wine. Cheers.

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