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Coravin, a really explosive novelty

Coravin the corkscrew destined to revolutionize the consumption of expensive wines because it exploded

Coravin

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

At the beginning of the year Robert Parker had cited the diffusion of Coravin in 7th position among the most significant trends in 2014. The father of “Wine Advocate” was convinced that Coravin would revolutionize the consumption of luxury wines making it accessible also for wine lovers who were not millionaires. And in fact the possibility of drinking a little from a bottle worth 5-10.000 Euro without having to pay for all of it made it a great opportunity for lovers of great wines, those who enjoy their bottles and don’t keep them in a vault so as to gain value.
Cold shower though!

Coravin esploded!

Chefs will be the most sought after experts in the future

According to the authoritative US Bureau of Labour Statistics the most searched for and those getting the higher pay during the next 5 years will be chefs

jamie-oliver-Uk

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

A degree in Medicine? No!
A Major in electronic engineering abroad? Don’t’ bother!
If you want to find a job learn how to cook! This message arrives from a study carried out by the American organ regarding occupation. And we the Italians are in pole position with 160.000 restaurants in our nation, without mentioning the cake stores, delicatessens, ice-cream parlours ……and of course the quantity of Italian restaurants in the world and the fame of our dishes. So dear aspiring chefs, the things to learn are two, technique in the kitchen and the English language.

Pétrus the perfect Merlot myth

Pétrus bottles have an average cost of 2.000€, which for great vintages can also become 68.000€. The brief and dazzling story of a non chateau

Pétrus 1961

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

It is out of every list but remains the myth of myths of Merlot on a worldwide scale and has its highest price among the top most expensive wines in the world on Wine Searcher.
I’ve only been there once during a course The Bordeaux Faculty of Oenology at theUniversity ofBordeaux and I remember that I was speechless for its small dimension and not at all monumental appearance. The vines practically reached the gate in front of the winery, on a flat piece of land. It was winter and the vines had been cut back, I remember that I together with other course members took some cuttings which we brought back toItaly in our luggage wit the intention of having, in our vineyards, a little piece of the Pomerol star.

The winery building is a low one with arch decorations, only recently ha sit been

chateau petrus

enlargedusing a refectory designed by Herzog & de Meuron  the Swiss architects of the Allianz Arena in Monaco and the National Stadium in Beijing.

Everything, be it the old part and the new, is of a practically sacred austerity. As are the concrete vats, which when I visited, seemed old fashioned, and today in sight of the new fashion of egg shake vats in pure cement, seem to have been the foregoers of a modernity with ancient roots.

The Pétrus Merlot stays 21 months in new barriques and then in 54.000 bottles with a retrò label that is quite ugly. Nothing else. The myth is all in the11,4 hectares of Vineyard and in its mysterious soil which is clave and rich in iron, which, according to them, makes it different to all the other vineyards nearby. The doubt regarding the diversity of this terroir comes when we discover that the owners, the Moueix, control many of the allotments nearby.

100.000 “Italian restaurants” abroad are frauds

In 59% of cases Italian restaurants abroad do not have chefs that are Italian or that are able to prepare our recipes and do not have Italian ingredients

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Felidia-New-York

VinoWay attracted my attention regarding something that I had always suspected: abroad the majority of Italian restaurants are frauds, in other words the chef is Lebanese or Greek and if he is Italian he previously had a completely different profession. The false restaurants are those with a more “nostalgic” aspect with chequered tablecloths, wicker seated chairs and the Italian flag in the window, in other words the recall the restaurants on the Trastevere in the 1950’s, a postcard stereotype, hat no longer exists.
Often the dishes are oily, overcooked, heavy and not at all pleasant to taste….. and nowhere near what we are used to eating when we go out to dinner. The sensation we get is that of an abundant use of conserves, frozen meat, sunflower seed oil, parmesan o mozzarilla… Fortunately thee bill is nearly always small. Then there are the real Italian restaurants with chefs that have spent years studying our cuisine with excellent teachers. These are where we fin d Italian design in the furnishings, excellent ingredients, and especial great Italian wines and a clientele that can appreciate them. These are the locations that Unioncamere has decided to certify through the RINA society.

Rothschild the banker grape growers

From their immense riches in finance to their extraordinary foresight for excellent vineyards. Here is Eric de Rothschild Chateau Lafite

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

eric-de-rothschild

The Rothschild dynasty begins in 1744, with the birth of Mayer Amschel in the Frankfurt ghetto, he was the one who created the bank and sent is five sons to the five European financial centres creating a formidable business network. During the nineteenth century, when at the apex, the Rothschild’s owned the largest private patrimony in the world, as well as the largest heritage in the world.
The two French branches of the family own two of the most famous and celebrates vineyards, the branch that the founder had originally sent to France bought Chateau Lafite, the other, descendant of the British Rothschild’s, bought Château Moutona Pauillac.

Today the Rothschild group is one of the largest private financial groups in the

Lafite

world with branches in 42 nations, an enormous influence on the planet’s economy, great art collections, but nothing makes them as proud and envied as the wines from their vineyards.

Bees too say that e must cut the use of pesticides in the vineyard

Take a look at the man bee that in China pollinates the fruit trees, and also the sentence for Château Monestier La Tour for having intoxicated the vineyard with phyto-chemicals

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

China - "man-bee"

The signs are numerous and all indicate the same thing: we must reduce the use of phyto-chemicals in agriculture and most of all in the vineyards
Only a few weeks ago we saw the images of the bee-men in China forced to pollinate 95% of fruit trees climbing up the branches. There are millions of Chinese who pollinate 20 trees a day for poor wages after a mad use of pesticides has killed all insects. We must ask ourselves how we will solve the problem in Italy if the same thing happened to our bees. This is a possible scenario as the analysis of the pollen on bees that fly form one flower to another, in 12 European nations has revealed abundant traces of pesticides especially in the “environment sentinels” that live close to the vineyards.

Love at first sight for Vernaccia riserva

Vernaccia di San Gimignano to be framed and rediscovered: finesse, personality and harmony much superior to long ago; in the Riserva version it bowls over the Gourmets

Seen for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Il Mestolo restaurant - dinner with Vernaccia di San Gimignano

For someone from Siena to rediscover Vernaccia di San Gimignano is like for an Eskimo to realize that ice is cold. Something evident hat you have always had under your nose and consequently you do not observe with the necessary attention. This is why the members of the Union Européenne des Gourmets in Siena get bowled over in front of the lavish and elegant character of the Vernaccia Riserva. Obviously the explanations given by Stefano Campatelli and a 15 kg greater amberjack prepared divinely by Nicoletta chef at the Il Mestolo restaurant are accomplices …. the 35 diners have had a collective sense of love at first sight.
The evening was special for me too as I was celebrating my recent nomination as Cavaliere della Repubblica /knighthood) and the Consul Alessandro Bonelli awards me a plaque in the name of the club.

The best rosé Champagne according to Tom Stevenson

Rosé Champagneis surely the trendiest and most expensive bubbly wine. Tom Stevenson and Cristiana Lauro present those they think are best

Dom Pérignon Rosé

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini 

The article by Wine Searcher is delightful and I really suggest you read it. It is sufficiently ironic, definitely well informed and full of intriguing news.  The author is considered the major world expert in Champagne having written 23 books and 50 publications on the subject 

So the rosé Champagne , many super experts do not love it – Jancis Robinson in primis –

b_jeff_koons_dom_perignon_rose_michel_fainsilber

but certainly its success seems now unstoppable.

The first boom took place in  1989 when Allan Cheesman chose the rosé Champagne Charbaut for the  Sainsbury’s supermarket emphasizing that the colour was obtained through a  natural method because of the contact between the juice and the skins of red grapes and not through mixing red and white wines. This small curiosity made the sales go sky high. A success which, then, did not last long, but which picked up again in 2004 becoming something more than a trend but a real commercial phenomenon. Today all the Maison de Champagne have a rosé wine in their range and 10% of the total production is pink. So now theChampagnerosé is no longer an “occasional kink” and the wineries have really begun to the think about the bettering of quality.