Wine words of the day: balsamic, Balthazar, barrique, brut, blend, bouquet. Build you wine vocab with us! Balsamic: since the ancient Greek tradicions, a balsamic touch was given to the wine adding some resins to it. Like every tradition, the legend says that the use of resins in the wine was born by mistake in Greece. The amphoras used to ship the wine were closed using the resin of pines as a sealer. It is not hard to believe that some resins could mixture with the wine and give it a pleasant balsamic aroma. This is how the traditional greek wine Retsina was...

A like… Acidità (Acidity): it is an important element in wine and, if it's presence is well balanced, it contributes to give freshness to the wine. How to recognize it? It makes your mouth water because your body tries to balance its pH, altered by the acidity. Also, acidity is very useful in order to clean the fat off your palate. Affinamento (Refinement): it is the final step of wine making, that helps the wine to mature. It usually takes place in the bottle, in wood barrels or steel tanks. The refinement gives the wine more harmony and...

If you usually hang out at winebars, you know what I am talking about. One of the worst violences committed to the wine is the wild swirling of the glass. If you are unluck, you can also witness a sacrilegious Champagne shake.   Let's see how and why to swirl the wine glass:   In order to know how to swirl the wine, not looking too goofy, it is necessary to know why you should do that.     Well, the reason why swirling the glass is getting more oxygen into the wine, it helps the wine to open up to the nose and giving off the...

An important change for Pinot Grigio IGT that, starting with the vintage 2017, is becoming DOC delle Venezie. Well, a “super “ Doc we should say, since it covers such a large area. Pinot Grigio is the 4th grape variety grown in Italy, but the real protagonists are the regions of Triveneto (Veneto, Trentino e Friuli Venezia Giulia) growing about the 85% of the total italian production of Pinot Grigio and the 43% of the global production. Big numbers that led the Pinot Grigio from being an IGT to a Controlled Denomination of Origin and Prowein 2018 was the springboard for...