Not only wine…

Few days left to participate in the Casato Prime Donne award 2015

An award that wishes to thank  those who divulge the territory and open new horizons for women. An award born in Montalcino in the first winery in Italy with an all female staff

Casato Prime Donne Award 2014 Jury and winners

There are still a few day left to be able to take part in the Casato Prime Donne 2015 award with photographs , articles, and TV and radio material regarding the wonderful Montalcino territory and Brunello, published between June 15th 2014 and June 1st 2015. Before the 15^th of June your entries must reach the Award Secretariat  (Casato Prime Donne 53024 Montalcino SI- casato@cinellicolombini.it).

Art, landscapes…. But most of all people from a land made famous by the excellence of its wines. As a prize there are bottles of prestigious wine as well as money (respectively 1.000 and 1.500 €) and the possibility of spending a week in an agritursimo apartment in this enchanted countryside.

Duccio Nacci 2010 Winner

The winners of the journalistic sections are chosen by the jury made up of Francesca Colombini Cinelli, Rosy Bindi, Anselma Dell’Olio, Anna Pesenti, Stefania Rossini, Anna Scafuri e Daniela Viglione. The list of past winners is full of wonderful names from Italian and International wine journalism: the last edition saw as protagonists Anna Di Martino, Daniele Cernilli and Ian D’Agata.

Wine Spectator gives my Brunello Prime Donne 2010 96/100

It is called Insider and it is an email that reports the best ratings on Wine Spectator. Every winery in the world wants to see its wines rated there. My Brunello has been

Brunello PrimeDonne 2010 Wine Spectator

By Donatella Cinelli Colombini

How exciting! Only 20 Brunello in the Insider and only 4 in the “hot wines”. Mine is in second position with a splendid rating of 96/100

The ratings by the most read and most authoritative American wine magazine start their journey towards the podium starting from a minimum of  50-74 for the not recommendable wines, then there are the mediocre ones (75-79), the good ones (80-84) the very good ones (85-89). And finally the champions (90-94) and the summit or rather, the classical wines rated between 95 and 100 points.

So, our Brunello Prime Donne 2010 is a vino CLASSICO that would mean an icon such as the works by Raffaello, Mozart, Petrarca … Maybe I’m being a bit presumptuous with these comparisons? It must be aid though that the search for harmony does countersign all my wines but especially the Brunello and this does make the word “Classic” quite apt.

How to make a career out of loving wine

First of all become a Sommelier, then go and work somewhere where you can taste great wine and listen to the opinions of real experts, then take the leap

SWE- corso da Sommelier

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

There are some expenses but they are not enormous, if there is a real passion for wine, some talent and a real desire to transform a passion into a successful career. In fact the  real investment is one of the AIS, FISAR, ONAV, FIS, ASPI courses …. With a Sommelier diploma in hand, it is possible to proceed with the next phases. In Italy the diploma counts and this first step must be paid.

To go abroad does not allow you to save money, these first steps cost elsewhere also. In Europe there are sommelier associations practically everywhere connected to the ASI and periodically organize similar course to the Italian ones. In Great Britain there is the very prestigious House of Master of Wine, the dream of every wine lover. It proposes very high level courses and certainly not for beginners, to begin with it is much better to go to  WSET, Wine and Spirit Education Trust where recently the royal sister-in-law Pippa Middleton studied. So other than having good teachers it also has high level students! In USA it is possible to address your training right from the beginning depending on what one wants to do: Master Sommeliers for those who want to work in the restaurants, WSET  is more apt for those who wish to work as importers or wine stores, SWE Society of Wine Educators which forms future teachers.

Screw-caps beat corks, at least among young consumers

Easy to open and reclose this convinces the majority of consumers, but only 1 out of 3 would choose the screw-cap bottle between two similar wines

Mollydooker Carnival of Love N° 2 Top 100 Wine Spectator

By Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Spain, Italy, and France, great nations for wine production still choose corks, but screw-caps are loved more by Germans, Americans and the British. The aluminum closure is preferred mostly by young consumers and particularly by women

SCREWCAPS ARE EASY TO USE BUT NOT CONSIERED OPTIMAL FOR GREAT WINES

The data comes from a survey carried out by IPSOS regarding 6.000 consumers in Italy France, UK Germany, Spain and USA. What surprises is the great distance between the producers decisions and the preferences of those who buy bottles. So in Spain where screw-caps are used only on 10 % of wines, where 43% of consumers prefer them

Less difference in Italy where  59% of consumers still like to use the corkscrew and the  screw-cap’s progress is slow going from 17 to 19% on wine bottles in 5 years. But there is 34% of Italian who with equal prices would prefer the screw-cap for practical reasons, even though the majority of them are convinced that cork maintains the quality of the wine.

Those asking for aluminum closures are the importing countries with Britain top of the list.

It is in these markets that the screw-cap is no longer connected to low quality wines and most of all to wines with low prices. Of course  91% of New Zealand wines and  70% of Australian wines have a screw-cap and the former are also quite expensive .

The best 2014 wine post regards Turkish wines

The digital wine Oscar, Wine blog award, went to  Lauren Mowery for a post regarding Turkish wines made with autochthonous varieties published in her blog Chasing the vine

Read for you by Donatella Cinelli Colombini

Lauren Mowery

There are 9 wine blog awards but the most important is surely the one for best blog post of the year. The award exists since 2007 and has quickly asserted itself as a prestigious prize.  There are about one

Wine Blog Awards

hundred participants and they get voted online, so as to choose the 5 finalists. A panel of experts then chooses the winner. The award living ceremony takes place during the Wine Bloggers Conference, resembling the real Oscar ceremony which takes place in front of the whole film world.
But let’s see you won the most desired prize, she is called Lauren Mowery and is a pretty young blonde journalist who writes about travel and wine. Here articles have been published by Wine & Spirits, Wine Enthusiast, Saveur, and The Wine Merchant …. and by many other magazines among which her personal blog Chasing the Vine. On  Twitter she has 14.200 followers … in other words she is a grand opinion leader and most of all she has had the courage to study a wine region which is still unknown such as Turkey letting us thus all discover a paradox. It is the nation with the longest wine making history – 7-15.000 years –and the political and religious situation most contrary to the consumption of alcohol.