Eduardo came to Etna from Tenerife (the Canary Island) back in 2014. He had studied viticulture and agronomy and there was more going on up on Etna. He landed a pretty sweet job as wine maker for Andrea Franchetti at Passopisciaro. Passopisciaro is one of the top producers on Etna and is dedicated to recognizing the many different vineyard sites. So Eduardo got his foot in the door and started looking for vineyards to rent or buy. He slowly got access to some and began making his own wines, I think when I was here in 2016 he was on... Continue reading

Summer's here and so are the Wines! The 4th of July has come and past. I would normally write something here about how amazing all these wines to follow are, but it just doesn't feel right to project the same persona when we're in the situation we're in. The sun is warm, the air is humid, the tomatoes are growing like weeds. But this isn't like any summer before it. We've been dealing with the corona virus for going on 5 months now and while we've all evolved through many stages of processing it.... but the reality of the virus... Continue reading

We Commissioned Art to Help Restaurant Workers...it's for sale! The first week of the pandemic and shut down were a chaotic scramble to figure out how to respond. I am very fortunate that my business is not customer facing. I had hard decisions to make but nothing like what many businesses I supply wine had to deal with. I was looking for anyway I could help people who were hurting more than me and a friend on social media suggested buying art to support artists and the arts community that is such an important part of Maine and Portland. So... Continue reading

Collecapretta is an amazing family winery in Terzo la Pieve, not far from Spoleto in central Umbria. The winery takes it's name from the hill that it's on: Collecapretta or "hill of the goat". The hill is said to have been known by this name since the Romans. The Mattioli family have been here for many hundreds of years. It's a small rural place that is rather exposed and windy. They call themselves farmers and not wine makers. On my last visit they said they were happy that the world had come to appreciate them but that they will just... Continue reading

Virtual Wine Tastings this Week! Virtual Wine Tasting Friday with Maine and Loire, Matt Mollo of SelectioNaturel, and the wines of Collecapretta Annalisa Mattioli with their press The Mattioli family has been in the tiny hamlet the Roman's once called Collecapretta (hill of the goats) since the 1100's. For generations the Mattioli have been cultivating the rugged hillsides of southern most Umbria. Located just outside of Spoleto, in the near-impossible-to-find borgo called Terzo la Pieve, today's farm is a scant 8 hectares in total; 2 planted to a mixture of local olives trees, 2 ha of farro and other ancient... Continue reading

After lunch with Mauricio Gonzalez Matt and I went over to visit Manuel Moraga with our new friend Patrick as a guide. We made the short drive to Cacique Maravilla and Manuel was in the driveway to meet us. People had told me he also had a very memorable mustache, so I had no problem picking him out. Manuel looks like an exceptionally solid guy. He just always seemed to have a wide and confident stance, like he was always expecting someone to try to push him over. Maybe he was, he had a very affectionate 100+ pound pitbull with... Continue reading

Virtual Wine Tasting Friday with Absentee Winery The most exciting CA winery I've found in....a long time Absentee is the most exciting and important winery I've picked up in the last 12 months. When was the last time I wrote an email like this about a California winery?! California occupies a huge place in the worlds cultural consciousness. Say California to someone and they immediately think of wide open spaces, rebels without causes, confidant people doing things their own way, Hollywood and wine country. Reality though is that the vast majority of CA wine is made industrially by guys in... Continue reading

Stories from my Crazy Wine Trip to Chile Wine Making in Southern Chile is Insane 2 weeks ago I was pressing grapes in southern Chile And I was doing it by hand over a bamboo mat! Earlier this month I went to rural southern Chile to seek out a metaphorical legendary lost city of wine making. It was crazy on it's own, but now in the perspective of the pandemic and shut down of normal life it seems even more surreal! In a normal world I would have come back and hosted all kinds of events to share what I... Continue reading

Saturday afternoon I went with part of Roberto's crew over to Santa Juana to harvest some plums and to move water in the vineyard. I had no idea what that meant but I jumped at the chance to spend some time getting to know the group of young guys working for Roberto. It was about a 45 minute drive and we listened to the most eclectic mix of Pablo Neruda set ro rock music, Chilean folk music, reggaeton, and Cumbia. It was not and the drive made us all drowsy so first thing when we got there was to mix... Continue reading

Monday we made the three hour drive up from Bio Bio to visit Gonzalez Bastias in the Maule valley. We took our time and had some street food in the working city of Talca. We ran into intense street demonstration between young women protesting for equal rights and saw them get confronted by riot police. Chile is in an intersting situation right now. They're still moving on from the rule of Augusto Pinochet (a brutal military dictator who ruled until 1990) and are about to vote on a new constitution. The country has modernized quickly but it's happened at different... Continue reading

Mauricio was born a couple hours north of Bio Bio up in the town of Talca in Chile's central valley. He worked at a couple wineries up in northern Chile, then over in Mendoza AR, before starting his own project down here in Bio Bio. He said (in the video you can watch below) that he moved down here because it was a nicer place to live, to make wine on his own terms, and for he and his family's quality of life. He said that up north in the industrial vineyards he had worked in his kids couldn't play... Continue reading

In early March 2020 I got to spend several days with Roberto Henriquez during harvest. Roberto grew up in the area around Bio Bio and had the experience of making wine with his grandfather when he was younger but then went on to other things. He's a pretty awesome drummer and has an album his band put out years ago. After spending some time as a musician Roberto got into a university program studying Agronomy. If I understood correctly, there aren't official wine making programs in Chile; you have to study Agronomy and it's considered engineering by the government and... Continue reading

The disaster in public health and the economy caused by the spread of covid-19 is unlike anything we’ve experienced before. In modern times we've never had a new virus emerge and create a pandemic. The resulting economic shock is also unique. All of our recent economic crises started as asset bubbles or liquidity crunches that first affected the financial industry before trickling down to Main St America. The covid-19 economic crisis is going in the opposite direction: it has hit Main Street first as small businesses close to protect the health of themselves and the public. Consumer spending is 70%... Continue reading

Ned's Going to Central Chile! Not just Chile: Bio Bio and Itata valleys! Look out for a lot of exciting videos, Blog Posts, and Social Media No, I'm not just telling you about Chile to make you Jealous I'm flying to Chile next Wednesday the 4th of March to visit Itata and Bio Bio. These are valleys down around Concepcion in central Chile, about 350 miles south of the capital Santiago. I speak no Spanish and have maybe 1/4 of a plan at this point. Why am I going 350 miles south of Santiago? Most of the wine that gets... Continue reading

I've been working with the Jurtschitsch winery for nearly a year now and I've been pretty excited about their wines, but this new arrival is one of the best wines I've tasted in the last 4 months. Mon Blanc is kind of sort of an experiment to see what full on biodynamics can in their particular climate. This is a blend of Gruner, Riesling, Weissburgunder, and Muskateller - all from the Loiserberg vineyard. This spends ten days on skins in open top red wine fermenters. The juice then goes into 600 L oak barrels. The wine is unfined and unfiltered.... Continue reading

8 years ago when I originally met Frank Cornelissen, he told me that he was spending all his money on buying more land on Etna. He said that more than anything he wanted to make wines that taste like liquid volcanic rock. He said he wanted to see Etna established as one of the premier wine regions in the world. Those goals sounded audacious back then, but Frank has stuck by them and is on his way to achieving them. That's crazy. Frank pouring wine at lunch Three and a half years ago I visited Frank on Etna. He'd just... Continue reading

I recently spent 4 days on Mount Etna and visited Passopisciaro, Frank Cornelissen, I Vigneri & Salvo Foti, Eduardo Torres Acosta, and SRC Vini. I work with Frank, Passopisciaro, Eduardo, I Vigneri, and Romeo Castello so I wasn't just there for fun. Etna is to me one of the most exciting wine regions in Italy. Top reason is the land and climate. I mean; it's an active volcano that is also the tallest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. The steep terraced vineyards crawl along the broken surface of the volcano, sometimes facing, east, then north, then west, and... Continue reading

On my second day in Sicily I left Etna and headed south in the general direction of Gela on the south coast. It was rural rolling farm country interspersed with just empty sharp rocky ridges. I found Lamoresca without much trouble though. Lamoresca is nearly an houra and a half south but you can still see Etna on the horizon hulking over all the hills. Filippo met me in the driveway but was clearly worried because I was early and he was doing 5 things at once. I assured him that I had come early specifically to go running, so... Continue reading

In the morning I headed over to Chiaramonte Gulfi to find Pianogrillo. Lorenzo was outside supervising some work with the olive trees and also a special breed of black Sicilian pigs they raise on the farm. Pianogrillo is a 100 hectare estate that's been in his family for many generations. He seemed super involved in the details of day to day running of the farm and seemed to be particularly passionate about working in and with nature. First he gave me a short tour of the family house, which long long ago had been a fortified watch tower protecting the... Continue reading

My solo running trip to Etna 3 and a half years ago to Etna was a life changing experience. It was incredible but it was also over whelming so I've wanted to go back and see Etna again. I've also seen a lot of new wines and producers come out of Etna since then, so it really felt important to get back for several reasons. So now I'm staging to get to the airport at 4 am and board an early flight to Rome and then JFK and on to Portland. I visited 7 wineries and spent almost a week... Continue reading

I met Roberto in autumn of 2018 and was blown away by his wines and his determination. Last year Roberto's wines had just come into the US so there weren't too many available and it was a really fast trip. A year's time can make a big difference and this autumn Roberto was back with new wines and more of them available! These wines are completely natural but are very precise and beautiful and pure tasting. They're expressive and elegant and real in a combination that is very rare in my experience. These are, to me, very important wines that... Continue reading

I left Dora and Sanguineto and blasted over to Monte Melino outside Magione in Umbria. It was close and the Alfa was very fast. I arrived a bit early but Marco was there at the wine garage to meet me. We walked over into the vineyards. They were kind of over grown and Marco described it as being like the Amazon. Danilo generally waits until later into the spring to prune in order to delay bud break and avoid some risks of late frost killing the buds. Conestabile della Staffa Vineyards Marco sharpening up some shears for me Danilo pruning... Continue reading

The lovable wreck that is the Ceppaiolo winery Saturday we were all kind of hung over but we headed out to Ceppaiolo. Danilo let me drive the Audi. It was very fast. the technology is pretty bleeding edge stuff. We got to Ceppaiolo quickly.... Ceppaiolo is a fantastically decrepit falling down little brick work shop with random junk around it such as an old fiat sedan and a moldering camping trailer. It's in a sort of weird suburb area of the town Bastia. Danilo uses it as sort of a test vineyard. There's no family depending on making wine from... Continue reading

Ribela is hard to describe. It's like trying to describe a dream, because actually that's sort of what it is. Chiara and Daniele together became fed up with Rome and developed a passion for natural wine in around 2010. In 2013 they started working with Danilo Marcucci at Vigneti Campanino up in the mountains of eastern Umbria. As they cut their teeth there they simultaneously started looking for a unique vineyard closer to Rome, the locality they had grown up in. In 2014 they found it: a tiny 2 ha vineyard in a pocket sized valley perched up in the... Continue reading

I don't even remember how long it is that I've been working with the wines of Omero. It's a been a while, but I first went and met them in the spring of 2017. Unusually I buy sort of direct from the winery which makes the relationship a bit more direct but also makes inventory more difficult. Omero started out farming pigs but soon decided it wasn't for him (the neighbors complained to the authorities about the smell and he felt it wasn't worth the hassle). Serendipitously just as he was having second thoughts about raising pigs the Montefalco Rosso... Continue reading