Looking Into Wine

The third episode of the English mini-series on English wines explores Cornwall with Sam Lindo of Camel Valley Estate. https://www.camelvalley.com/?msclkid=b4bf09daa60a11eca885d38a7ebd41e9 A brief history ex-RAF pilot Bob Lindo and his wife Annie planted their first eight thousand vines in 1989, they never dreamed of the phenomenal success they would achieve within 2 decades. They had bought their...

In the second episode of the English Mini-series, we explore Hampshire and the English viticulture with Nick Crombie, head Viticulturalist of Hambledon Vineyards. Hambledon Vineyard is England's oldest commercial vineyard which was planted by Major General Sir Guy Salisbury-Jones in 1952. In the present day, current owner Ian Kellett has a meticulous, scientific approach to wine production and has...

Great Britain is a premium wine-producing region, with around 650 vineyards in England and Wales covering some 2,750 hectares and producing sparkling and still wines. English and Welsh's wines have won many prestigious awards recently and Stephen Skelton is one of the leading authorities on the wines of the UK who has been working in those vineyards for over 30 years! The wines of Great Britain is...

English wine is growing in popularity and is increasingly recognised as a premium wine-producing region, The most popular grapes varieties grown in English vineyards are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Bacchus, as well as Pinot Meunier, Syval Blanc and Ortega. According to WineGB, some 3,500ha of vineyards are now rooted in UK soils, with 690ha added in 2019 and the number is growing year by year. One...

We are starting the second part of season two by speaking about something that I wish was available while I was doing my advanced studies in Capstone California. California Wine Institute is offering VIP Access to level the one: ttps://tinyurl.com/CWIUKVIP Leave a comment or review to let us know if you enjoy it! Capstone California is the new website, developed by California Wines under the auspi...

Chianti over centuries had become the equivalent of Italian red wine and grew to be a style rather than a wine that represented a place. The key producers in the Chianti Classico region were aristocrat Florentine families with interestingly up to the Second World War, a run their estates with a system known as sharecropping. Landowners allowed farmers the use of the land in return for half of the...

As South Africa approaches yet another wave of #Covid, I speak to Testalonga is one of the most progressive producers of the country. This Durban-born winemaker Craig Hawking is all about avoiding stereotypes, an ideology embodied in his self-designed wine labels which we discussed on the show. They are all constructed from various photos that have appealed to him in some way Craig was the first p...

Israel is a sliver of a country stretching 424 km/263 miles in length. The north and centre of the country may be divided into the fertile coastal plain and the mountainous region that runs down the spine of the country, which falls away to the Jordan Rift Valley in the east. The quality revolution began in the 1890s with Baron Edmond De Rothschild although commercial operations were in place befo...

Micro-oxygenation, or Mox to its mates, is a controlled, periodically continuous addition of tiny amounts of oxygen to the wine, usually red. Forget the new world being leaders in technical winemaking innovation. Mox was devised in 1991 by Patrick Ducournau, of Domaine Mouréou in Madiran, as a way of softening the tannins of his home grape variety Tannant which has legendary tannins. Benefits incl...

In this episode, I talk to Nicole Rolet the co-owner of Chêne Bleu, who has to put Chêne Bleu on the global wine map in just over two decades. Blessed with a convergence of natural factors, Chêne Bleu has the benefit of an exceptional location, multifaceted geology, and a southern Rhône climate with soils more typical of the northern Rhône. Isolated and protected, high in a mountain saddle, Chêne...

All over the world old vines get proudly mentioned on labels, in many languages. Such is the value everywhere accorded to old vineyards and the wines they produce. With my guest Sarah Abbot MW who run the Old Vine conference, we looked at what are the values of old vines and why we should care for them? Sarah aims to create a global category for Old Vine which has she say has been successful for S...

Welcome to the first episode of the second season of the Looking Into Wine Podcast, is so good to be back - Mattia Today’s guest is the Associate Specialist in Cooperative Extension in Enology for the University of California UC Davis Anita Oberholster. Today she is here to spotlight the incredibly growing concern that is Smoke taint. In recent years she has focused her attention on Smoke Taint le...

Wine Barrels made from oak are among the oldest technologies used to produce wines. But where all the wood to produce all those barrels, what oak is good for Barrels, what do we do next? With my gest Mel Knox, an international semiretired wine barrel broker with over 40 years of experience in trading and researching wine barrels for winemaking sourcing some of the most esteemed tonnellerie/barrel-...

Recognized as an AVA in 1981, Santa Cruz Mountains was the first California appellation to be defined by its mountain topography. As the name suggests, Santa Cruz Mountains is a mountainous AVA that sits between Monterey Bay and San Francisco. The rugged terroir in the mountains can be extremely difficult for vignerons, but those who persevere are rewarded with some of California's most celebrated...

A transformation has been taking place in the vineyards and wineries of Portugal during the last twenty years, bringing hundreds of new wines onto the international market. Indigenous grape varieties that were once obscure are now becoming mainstream. Thought of as a country that produced mainly red wine, Portugal is now proving that it has producers capable of making world-class white wines while...

The historical area between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene in Veneto, has been promoted to Prosecco Superiore Conegliano Valdobbiadene to DOCG in 2010. After a decade on the making, Valdobbiadene is setting itself apart from the wider Prosecco Doc produced in Both Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The Conegliano Valdobbiadene has many factors that are unique to the region for one there is increasing...

At the foothills of Biblical Mount Ararat, at altitudes between 1400 and 1600 meters above sea level and just a stone through from the world’s oldest winemaking facility Areni 1 cave. The vineyards of ZORAH can be found in the rural village of Rind in the heart of Vayots Dzor, Armenia’s classic winemaking region. Zorah aims to re-establish the long history of Armenia for wines and to bring the nat...

The Adriatic Sea, is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkans. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto to the northwest and the Po Valley. The sea affects many wine regions in Europe but is in the northernmost part where it’s most visible, winds coming from the south channels through the whole sea into Friuli, Slo...

In this episode, we explore Furmint a noble grape of Hungary, with Caroline Gilby Master of Wine. Furmint is undoubtedly one of Hungary most valuable white grape variety. Is unique, distinctive with a flavour profile quite unlike any other grape variety I have ever tasted. With Caroline Gilby MW, who has been visiting Hungary since the 90s, we discussed one of favourite variety. Gouais Blanc is th...

Randall Grahm, one of California's most innovative vintners, founder of Bonny Doon Vineyard and Popelouchum is the guest of Looking Into wine. We started by talking about his early days. After three years studying philosophy at Santa Cruz University, and completing a winemaking degree at UC Davis, Grahm acquired a vineyard site at Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz mountains. His first dream was to make...

The Rhône Rangers began as an informal band of like-minded renegades who were convinced that the grapes traditional to France’s Rhône Valley would thrive in the Mediterranean climate of California. As recently as the late 1980s, there were only a few dozen such producers on the entire West Coast. The ideas of those pioneers caught on rapidly in the 1990s and 2000s, and the 31 wineries that gathere...

In 1924, Rudolf Steiner presented his Agriculture Course to a group of 111, farmers in Poland. Steiner spoke of agriculture to ‘heal the earth’ and he laid the philosophical and practical foundations for such differentiated agriculture. Biodynamic agriculture is now practised internationally as a specialist form of organic agriculture. Steiner’s Agriculture Course comprised just eight lectures pre...

In this episode, I spoke to Jane Lopes. Jane is the author of Vignette, in her book jane opens up about many great moments of her life and she put a great deal of effort in explain how stress and anxiety have dictated many part of her life. And outside the book, she has been recently been part of an expose article about sexual harassment from senior members of the then heads of the Court of Sommel...

Modern and traditional are words that many wine aficionados, students or professionals have heard off but what about postmodernism? In this podcast, Clark Smith the author of Postmodern Winemaking touches upon how modern winemaking changed the wine industry. For modern winemaking is generally referred to as wines that have developed after the second world war when electricity had become widely ava...

Welcome to the second producer profile this time we are in southern France, Languedoc specifically in Fitou with Owner/Winemaker, Katie Jones of Domaine Jones. Katie moved to southern France from England to work for the local Co-operative, as the years passed she decided to open her own winery in 2008, starting off with a mere two hectares of old vine Carignan, something unheard of in her village...