Friday evening in Cortona there was a wonderful collaboration between Baracchi Winery and Ristorante Il Comanchero, located just outside of the walls of the Cortona on the hillside with beautiful views of the Val di Chiana. Guests were greeted with a glass of Baracchi sparkling wine and this blogging diva was encouraged by Benedetto Baracchi to help open one of the bottles in a very traditional way using a sciabola (sword). Benedetto showed me...

I had the pleasure of joining my favorite Cortona winery Leuta for a barrel tasting with award winning sommelier Luca Gardini (voted World’s Best Sommelier in 2010), enologist Maurizio and of course owners Denis and Enzo. This tasting was very important, they were here to taste 4 different varieties from 54 different barrels in order to select the very best barrel of each variety to blend for their top wine, Nautilus. Each barrel was...

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...

Recently a well known wine -o-phile in Italy, Alessandro Rossi, put together a group of winemakers, wine lovers, wine writers and wine experts to blind taste 9 of the best Cabernet Francs from Tuscany.  Only one of the wines was from the Cortona D.O.C. area. (important to note since I’m blatantly for home team Cortona D.O.C.!) The end result, Leuta rated 95/100 for the win. It’s no secret I’m a Leuta fan and I am always...

One of my favorite local wineries, Leuta, just released a 375 ml bottle!  I like to call it “purse size” but it will fit nicely also in picnic hampers, small grocery bags or whatever you are using to take along some nice cheese and salami for a little snack! Most importantly, this is a great wine.  Word on the street is that the name is changing to Tau because this isn’t just your average “rosso toscana” (red table...