Drink Italia: Six favourite reds for 2018

We asked our wine buyers to recommend good-value Italian red wines to enjoy this spring and beyond. Here are six we think will become favourites for 2018… Even if you have your ‘go-to’ wines, one of the joys of wine appreciation is finding a new bottle that surprises you and goes on to become a favourite. […]

Drink Italia: Dessert wines

Although we now associate Italy with iconic red wines, in fact, the greatest wines of Ancient Rome were sweet whites. Italia! delves into Italian dessert wines… The Classical texts of Cato, Pliny and Virgil tell us that the Romans liked their wines white, sweet and oak-aged. This was (and still is) achieved by picking selected […]

Drink Italia: Tuscan reds

From ‘Super Tuscan’ to Brunello, there are plenty of fine Tuscan non-Chianti reds, and they’re not all super-expensive either. Here’s a selection of Tuscan reds your wallet will love… Traditionally in Tuscany, if you were making red wine, you used indigenous Italian grape varieties like Sangiovese and that was that. During the late 1960s and […]

Brits: The Biggest Prosecco Fans

Brits drink the most prosecco

If you love a glass (or indeed a bottle) of Prosecco to enjoy with your meal or to help you destress then feel confident in the knowledge that you are not alone. It turns out that Britain is actually the world’s biggest fan of the Italian fizz. We apparently consumed a third of all the prosecco produced […]

Grappa

Think of it as Italian firewater? An end-of-meal tipple to be feared as much as revered? Paul Pettengale explains why quality grappa should be sipped and savoured… You know the drill. You’ve enjoyed your welcoming glass of prosecco. You’ve sampled a glass of white, maybe a glass of red with your six-plus course meal at […]