A sommelier’s view of the care, connection and pleasure behind every bottle.
A bottle of wine is a year, or sometimes several, of someone’s work. Inside it are the rain and the sun, the slope where the vines grew, and people who cared for them. (more…)
I still remember the summer of 2010, when I told my AIS wine instructor, Leonardo Taddei, that I would soon be leaving my beloved Lucca for faraway Australia. Whenever, as a young girl, I shut myself away in my bedroom to daydream, scribbling down lists of exotic places I wanted to visit, Australia would invariably end up at the very bottom of the page. “Too far away,” I would think. (more…)
A sponsor of art exhibitions, Majer is a bakery and patisserie brand with ten outlets deeply rooted in their respective Venetian sestieri, whose names they bear, and two dining venues: Giudecca and Il Refettorio. Majer has long been a familiar name in Venice for its pastries, traditional biscuits and whole-bean coffee. The historic name has also been retained by its new owner, Fabrizio De Nardis. (more…)
Along the Canale dei Mulini, from Castel Bolognese to Alfonsine, a cycling and walking route winds through nature and history, leading to the Mulino Scodellino, also known as the Countess’s Mill. Today, this historic mill produces flour in compliance with production and distribution standards and hosts a rich programme of cultural events. (more…)
The white of stone gleaming in the southern light, the green of the garden vineyard where vines grow on trellises between dry-stone walls alongside 1,500 olive trees, the blue of the sky and sea in the distance: Masseria Amastuola stands on a plateau 210 metres above sea level in the Terra delle Gravine Regional Park. This is a landscape of rock-cut settlements, churches carved into stone and historic masserie, just a few kilometres from the Itria Valley and the Sassi of Matera, south of the sites where the Gold of Taranto was discovered. (more…)
In the heart of Pavia, overlooking the banks of the Ticino River, lies Horti, an urban and human regeneration project inaugurated in 2022. Created by Almo Collegio Borromeo, the project has given the city a 35,000-square-metre green space that once contained vegetable gardens and orchards used to feed the College’s students. (more…)
