Category Archives: Wine

Remembering Andrea Franchetti

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I can count on one hand the teachers who have truly impacted my life, who have changed me as a person and the trajectory of my path. Yesterday, I lost one of these precious few.

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A lot has been written about Andrea Franchetti the winemaker, the visionary, the creative genius behind Tenuta di Trinoro, the catalyst that brought Mt. Etna to the world stage with his pioneering Passopisciaro. He was surely all of these things and more, with his hard-headed, contrarian, bullish ways of operating, his single-minded vision, and his intense connection to nature and the places in which he made wine. Continue reading →

Pruning for Sap Flow: Extending Vineyard Life & Improving Output

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Published on GuildSomm.com:

In the vineyard, trunk diseases are spread through fungal pathogens that enter the wood through wounds, most often from pruning but also from other mechanical injuries to the vine. The diseases can metastasize over time, resulting in symptoms that include dead spurs and stunted shoots, as well as internal wood symptoms that can be seen via cross-sectional cuts on permanent wood. These can lead to the partial or total death of the vine. The most prevalent trunk diseases globally are Esca and Eutypa dieback. (While these are the focus of this article, it’s important to note that other diseases, such as Botryosphaeria dieback and Phomopsis dieback, are also common in certain regions.) The economic impact of these diseases is seen in dramatic yield reductions and, ultimately, loss of the vine. Recent estimates indicate that properties can lose 10 to 20% of their vines in a season once affected.

To address this major challenge, specific pruning methods that focus on sap flow are increasingly being implemented, with the aim of helping to extend the life of vineyards by preserving pathways for nutrients to sustain the vine. This article will outline the diseases these practices confront and examine the methods themselves, including their history, associated challenges, and sustainability.

DiebackDead wood (dieback) is marked by the darker brown visible in this cross section (Photo credit: Sarah Bray)

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Old Vines: Contrada Rampante, Sicily

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WWC21 Bray S - Etna lava

For JancisRobinson.com.

Etna is a fascinating place, at once feral and majestic, old and new. Large swaths of blackened, rocky earth scar its surface, reminders of the devastation that can come from an eruption. It is the highest active volcano in Europe, its magmatic activity the result of the meeting of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates far beneath the glimmering seas that surround the island of Sicily. The last eruption to reach Catania and the sea was in 1669, but she’s still quite active (yes, the locals refer to her in the feminine). Craters can form at any elevation, so when they burst like little pustules, rivers of lava can easily reach the small buildings and towns that ring its lower third. Driving along the Etna wine route from the town of Passopisciaro to neighboring Randazzo, one passes through the flow from 1981, still as starkly rugged as the day it first enveloped 200 hectares of land. Continue reading →

Exploring the Stags Leap AVA

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pine-ridge-knoll

I’ve been doing a lot of exploring of the AVAs of Napa recently, and people have been wonderful about letting me poke around their vineyards. Here, I’m checking out the sandstone and shale of the Pine Ridge knoll in the Stags Leap District, which basically is a fallen mountain peak of Great Valley Sequence bedrock from when the earth moved so much that the Vaca range got too tall, and portions cascaded down to form the knobs that litter the valley’s center-south districts.

What Wine Means: Revisiting Passopisciaro 2007

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Sometimes a bottle of wine is like a much-needed hug.

In this case, that was due to both the maker and the giver. 2007 was the last vintage before Andrea Franchetti began making his single vineyard Contrada wines, so this was still his only Nerello Mascalese, and so much of that fruit still made it into this bottling. I’ve always thought of Passorosso (as this wine is now known) as his calling card, a holistic approach to representing a vision of Mt. Etna’s potential, encapsulating its myriad aspects, lava flows, and elevations in a glass. Revisiting this wine took me immediately back to a place for which I’ve been so nostalgic; tasting it, I was reminded of how the best wines of that place stand with the great wines of the world.

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Truffles, Dogs, & a 2003 Chiara Boschis Cannubi

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I had the pleasure of previewing THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS film and organizing an at-home viewing party for members of The Napa Valley Reserve, which I was fortunate enough to test drive last evening. We brokered shipments of white truffles, at the tail-end of the season, with Tartufi Morra, one of the oldest purveyors in Alba, and Alessandro was such a dear that he sent me one as well.

truffle-barolo Continue reading →

On Syrah

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If you asked yourself which were the great red grapes of the world, and Syrah didn’t come to mind, please read on. If it did, read on anyway.


A deeply colored grape, rich in anthocyanins and a compound called rotundone that imbues fresher expressions with a powerful peppery note, Syrah is one of the world’s most noble grapes. Known for savory, almost meaty notes, high-toned hints of black pepper (from that same compound rotundone), black-fruited character, and at times even floral aromas, its myriad layers lend itself to producing wines of great intensity and expressiveness of place. In the best versions, wines made of Syrah can be hauntingly aromatic and seductive. Continue reading →

Anosmia

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I never knew how much I loved my sense of smell until I lost it. I’ve always thought I had a rather terrible nose — either overly sensitive (ack, perfume!) or can’t pick out a violet from a gardenia. Turns out, it was working just fine until I got COVID.

I didn’t fully understand what it meant to lose your sense of smell. I didn’t occur to me that, while of course I can still inhale just (mostly) fine, in the place of aromas and/or odors, there is just absence. Complete and total absence. I can’t smell a thing. Not  homemade pho, not a burning candle, not the eucalyptus extract that I bought in Morocco to clear my sinuses (think essence of Vick’s Vapo-rub), not even a whiff of gasoline.

homemade phoFor someone whose life pretty much revolves around cooking and eating and drinking Continue reading →

Truffles & Nebbiolo: The Perfect Pairing

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Sarah Bray, Associate Director of Wine Education at The Learning Center at Meadowood Estate, lived in Italy for many years and has a deep love for the Nebbiolo grape, especially when paired with truffles. She has compiled a list of Barolo and Barbaresco vintages and wines that are in an ideal drinking window now, in time for the tail-end of the glorious season of tartufi bianchi, or the famed white truffles of Alba. Continue reading →