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Issue 587 - July 25th - 29th 2022 - Expressly created for 4.376 wine lovers,
professionals and opinion leaders from all over the world |
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Château Lafite Rothschild is the most traded label, in the first half of 2022, on the Liv-ex, the benchmark index of the secondary fine wine market, where, despite Bordeaux’s steadily declining market share, moreover, six of the top ten most traded wines actually come from the Gironde, with Sassicaia closing the top ten. Among individual vintages, the most traded wine in the first half of 2022, by value, is the Louis Roederer 2008, with the 2018 vintage of Sassicaia (£2,464) in tenth place. By volume, however, Dom Perignon 2012 is in first place, with Marchesi Antinori’s Tignanello 2018 (£1,200) at position No. 10. |
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Today Etna is one of the diamonds of Sicilian and Italian wine. Made of a thousand facets, represented by the Contrade, close but all different. Told in the glass by Nerello Mascalese and Carricante, with more than 130 wineries that today make the most of the 1,300 hectares of vines in the most suitable areas (compared to the more than 50,000 hectares of vineyards that covered the volcano at the end of the nineteenth century, from which blended wines used throughout Europe were produced), an expression of a quality that comes from the courage of producers who give life to a “super heroic” viticulture, with the vines climbing on terraces and “glades” made up of chestnut, walnut, hazelnut and other forests that tell of incredible natural biodiversity, nurtured by the volcano’s vitality. This is a territory that is ancient and young at the same time, but which has clear ideas for the future: working even more on quality, on the longevity of the wines (even the whites, capable of surprising over time), on thorough and precise zoning, on the transition from Doc to Docg, on sustainability and hospitality, with an increasingly international and high-level tourism precisely thanks to the success of wine production (also told by the numbers for the first half of 2022, which see growth in bottled wine for all types, white, red, rosé and sparkling wine), and focusing on growing the value of the wines, and not on increasing production, also to consolidate the value, which is growing (even in collecting). And to protect the integrity of a landscape and a territory that, from the more than 3,300 meters of Etna’s summit to the sea, has so much to offer, even in terms of gastronomy. A path that, at WineNews, on a trip to the Volcano, the producers themselves have traced (their reflections in the in-depth article), from those always present to those who have arrived on Etna in recent times, such as Francesco Cambria (president Consorzio Etna Doc) and Mariangela Cambria (Cottanera), Alberto Aiello Graci (Graci), Michele Faro (Pietradolce), Giovanni Russo (Girolamo Russo), Antonio Rallo (Donnafugata) and Alessio Planeta (Planeta). |
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In March 2022, the European Commission published its proposed revision of the Geographical Indications policy, which would also include designations of origin under the protection of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). A reform that, since it took its first steps, has always found a wall put up by Efow - European Federation of Origin Wines (of which Federdoc is a member for Italy), which on July 5 organized a seminar, in Strasbourg, to defend the reasons for opposing it and the strengths of the actual model of protection of GIs. “This system”, Efow stressed, “is an integral part of the CAP, and GIs help create value, guarantee better remuneration for producers and make an important contribution to the rural development of European territories”. |
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The editorial staff of “Wine Enthusiast”, the popular wine magazine that has gone through a small revolution in recent days, as previously reported by WineNews, is still being redesigned with the arrival of Christina Cabrales as the new tasting director, and the farewell of Kerin O’Keefe, as Italian editor, who will be replaced with two wine tasters. Namely Jeff Porter, an old acquaintance of Italian wine, formerly responsible for wine and beverage for Joe Bastianich’s American restaurants (and star of “Sip Trip”, a TV format telling the story of a journey through the Italy of wine, made in past years in partnership with Vinepair, Iem and Colangelo & Partners, ed.), who will cover regions such as Piedmont, Veneto, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Marche, Umbria and the entire North, from East to West. Danielle Callegari, on the other hand, formerly a teacher at the “Department of French & Italian” at Dartmouth College, an advisor to the “Dante Society of America”, and former co-curator of “Gola”, a podcast on Italian food and drink culture, will be in charge of wine tastings and reviews of wines from Tuscany, Sicily, Puglia, Abruzzo, Campania, Sardinia, Lazio, Basilicata, Calabria and Molise. |
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Wine producers all over Italy are hoping for a few more rains to face a 2022 harvest that, due to drought and great heat, will be complex and, probably, anything but abundant in many areas. Meanwhile, in Sicily, in the Menfi area, the very first bunches of Moscato and Pinot noir have already fallen. And cutting them is once again Cantine Settesoli, in Sicily, one of the most important cooperatives in Italy and the South (with 6,000 hectares of vineyards, 1,000 of which are organic), led by Giuseppe Bursi. |
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The Sicilian and Italian wine worlds salute one of their founding fathers, Count Lucio Tasca d’Almerita, who has passed away, at the age of 82. He gave a huge boost to the development of the Tasca d’Almerita family winery, which his sons, Alberto and Giuseppe Tasca, who still guide it today, have brought to even higher levels (with five estates, Regaleali, Capofaro Malvasia & Resort, Tascante, Mozia and Sallier de La Tour). Lucio Tasca d’Almerita, together with Diego Planeta and Antonio Rallo, was one of the great architects of the Renaissance of Sicilian wine. And, with them, in 1998, he founded Assovini Sicilia, a project that was innovative and forward-looking at the time. Lucio Tasca d’Almerita was among the first in Sicily to experiment with international varieties, later opening a path followed by many. |
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“100% of the vineyards planted on “M rootstocks” are dealing brilliantly with his extremely dry summer and showing excellent quality and quantity results”: Professor Attilio Scienza commented on the monitoring results carried out by the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Milan and Winegraft on hundreds of vineyards spread in different viticultural areas from the North to the South of the country, where the extraordinary resilience of “M” rootstocks to water stresses and exceptional temperatures of these months that are bending Italian agriculture and viticulture emerges. |
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