This week’s Wine, Shine & Dine event in Cortona on Thursday, September 22, 2013 featured award winning Brunello winery Casanova di Neri with special guest, owner Giacomo Neri! The free tasting started at 4:00 p.m. at the Molesini Wine Shop in our beautiful Piazza Repubblica just as the sun was beginning to set. There was even a small tasting station featuring Pratomagno prosciutto which comes from a mountainous area in central Tuscany....

The vendemia (wine harvest) is in full swing in Cortona! In the past few days I’ve had wine tours and the opportunity to visit some of the local wineries and see first hand the wine harvest in full swing.   This is Syrah that has been harvested by hand and is waiting to be taken to the winery to be processed. The cassettes are loaded into the back of a waiting tractor that slowly collects the harvested grapes and within an hour heads...

I was invited by my good friends Leuta to see them bottle their wine using a mobile bottling line. Basically a big semi-truck comes to the winery, unloads the entire back container to the ground which then opens up and the bottling line is contained inside. Owner and winemaker Denis Zeni took me on tour of the line while they were bottling their...

It’s rough being a wine blogger.  I mean all these dinners and tastings to write about.  I’m currently behind in posting all the goings on as I speak! BUT, I wanted to give the inside scoop on one of Cortona’s newest hidden gems and the amazing pairings they are designing. Benvenuto Zaffiro Rosso, a small intimate little wine bar located within Del Brenna Jewellery’s new beautiful showroom underneath Cortona! Being good...

This coming Sunday is the once a year event “Cantine Aperte” (open wineries) all over Italy.  Most importantly, here in the Cortona area the Cosorzio Vini Cortona has put up a listing of which wineries are participating, you can click on the image to go to the Consorzio website. Hope to see you all...

The city of Copenhagen was host to a very special group, our very own Strada dei Vini Cortona on the the 1st and 2nd of March! The local newspaper Politiken spread the word and more than 1500 tickets were sold in advance for the two day event.  I think that probably at least a good 200o people attended.   The space was ultra modern with the theme being wine, Cortona products and tourism.  Of course most people were there for the wine. Not...