BING Wines (Best Italian Native Grapes and Wines)

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Best Italian Native Grapes and Wines (better known as BING Wines), is a two day event in which roughly 100 estates from all over Italy pour their wines made from native grapes. BING Wines also features one of a kind vertical tastings and wine business forums providing state of the art focuses on the international wine markets. It’s an asbolutely unique opportunity to talk with the producers who make some of Italy’s best wines but also some of its rarest, from Sangiovese to Arvesiniadu, from Nebbiolo to Malvasia Rosa, from Aglianico to Nuragus, from Ribolla Gialla to Enantio. BING is open to both specifically invited wine professionals as well as the wine loving public and is an absolutely fun, great experience and time for all involved!
There are two videos for your viewing pleasure to choose from, one in English and one in Italian.

 

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book 2020

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Publisher: Mitchell Beazley (Octopus Publishing Group)

General Editor: Margaret Rand

Description:

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book is the essential reference book for everyone who buys wine – in shops, restaurants, or on the internet. Now in its 43 year of publication, and more than 12 Million copies sold, it has no rival as the comprehensive, up-to-the-minute annual wine guide. Hugh Johnson and his editors/authors provide clear succinct facts and commentary on the wines, growers and wine regions of the whole world. He reveals which vintages to buy, which to drink and which to cellar, which growers to look for and why. Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book gives clear information on grape varieties, local specialities and how to match food with wines that will bring out the best in both. This new edition also contains a colour supplement on biodynamic, biologic and natural wines.

By Ian about his Introduction to Italy:

“I have looked upon the Italy section in Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book as a magnificent opprotunity to paint a complete and accurate picture of Italy’s fascinating if very complex world of wine. And so I have given, with excellent help and valid insight from Michele Longo, my longtime associate and co-editor of this section, plenty of attention to the many unique territories, denominations, wines and grape varieties that make Italy such a fantastic wine place. And being independent allows me to give those Italian wine realities that are outstanding but often forgotten elsewhere the attention they deserve. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much I do writing it“.

My congratulations to Yang Lu Ms and Lingzi He named to future 50 list

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The Future 50 list has just been launched this year to help celebrate and mark the joint 50 anniversaries of theWine & Spirit Education Trust and IWSC. It identifies fifty individuals under 40 years of age who are thought likely to play major players in the world of international wine in the years to come.

The final 50 was selected from an initial nominations list of over 600, a number then reduced to a more manageable final shortlist of 82, that was sent to the chief judging panel for the final picks. This panel included the likes of Stephanie Macleod (master blender, Dewar’s), Richard Paterson (master blender, Whyte & MacKay), Xavier Rousset MS (restaurateur), Joe Fattorini (The Wine Show), Ian Harris (WSET) and Allen Gibbons (IWSC). Congratulations to all thsoe named to the list, a number of whom have studied Italian wine with Ian, including Lu Yang MS and Lingzi He of Shanghai, two super-nice human beings, outstanding wine professionals,  whom I have gotten to know well over the years. Congratulations!

November 2019 Ian D’Agata is named vice president of The Association International Des Terroirs (Ait)

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Ian D’Agata has been appointed to the governing board as Vice President of the newly founded Association Internationale des Terroirs (AIT) on November 23-24 at the 4th International Terroir Renaissance Symposium in Shanghai, China.

The AIT’s goals are to teach, promote, and broadcast terroir in relation to wine, tea, and all foodstuffs. The President of the AIT is Thibault Liger-Belair (of the eponymous Burgundy estate), while Aubert de Villaine, co-owner of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, is the Honorary President; Ian D’Agata, Bernard Burtschy and Jacky Rigaux are the three Vice Presidents. As explained by D’Agata in his presentation of the AIT in Shanghai “… The ultimate goal of AIT is to promote a culture of terroir, and therefore, the appreciation of wines and all foodstuffs that convey a sense of place and a tie to their land of origin. In so doing, our hope is to act on behalf’s of the planet’s biodiversity, which is put at risk by excessively industrial takes on wine and food production methods that tend to standardize colors, aromas and tastes of everything we eat and drink”.

The association will try to reach these goals through the organization of conferences, the publication of scientific papers, charity fundraisers and the granting of bursaries to young university and technical college students who devote their research projects to terroir-related aspects in wine and food. The AIT governing board will meet in Burgundy in January 2020 to begin discussions on tyhe tasks at hand; amongst the first tasks facing the AIT governing board will be the creation of a Producers Committee and an Experts Committee. The former will feature both New and Old World winemakers including the likes of Thomas Duroux (Chateau Palmer), Gregoire Gouges (Domaine Henri Gouges), Alvaro Palacios (Pingus) and Giuseppe Vajra (GD Vajra), while the latter will boast academicians and researchers such as Dominique Massenot. José Vouillamoz, and André Selosse. The AIT’s first major event, a conference devoted to an aspect of terroir currently being identified, will take place in Paris in May 2020.

The new edition of Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book is out now

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The world’s best selling wine guide, with over 12 Million copies sold worldwide, Hugh Johnson’s

Pocket Book of Wine, brilliantly managed by Margaret Rand (the General Editor) is on sale now.
The 2020 Edition contains up-to-the-minute information on more than 6000 wines and growers, quick reference vintage charts, illustrated supplements on organic, natural and biodynamic wines, the Italy section is once again co-authored by Michele Longo and Ian D’Agata. They have renewed most of the entries and inserted a number of new estates.

“Affordable, comprehensive, up-to-date and easy to take along, this small, compact reference book
is the best travel companion for all those who love wine. Working with Ian, I’ve tried hard to succeed
in expressing the essence of a grape variety, a wine, a winery or the distinctive characteristics of a denomination and its best interpreters in just a few lines. My thanks to ultra-passionate and super-competent  Margaret Rand, our General Editor, who allows us every year to renew and enrich the Italy Section so as to contribute with this guide to making our grapes, our wines and the incredible work and passion of Italian producers better known” Michele Longo states.

For more information: www.octopusbooks.co.uk