It is with small steps that great people effect great change, and this is exactly what Ntsiki Biyela embodies within the South African wine industry. Originally from Mahlabathini, a rural village in KwaZulu-Natal, Ntsiki won a scholarship to study Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University in 1999, graduating in 2003. She was often posed questions…
Named after nearby river La Denante which runs through the village of Davayé just West of the city of Mâcon, Domaine de la Denante was established in 1975 by Damien’s father Robert Martin, with just two and a half hectares of vines. The winery itself is at the foot of the historic Rock of Solutré…
To consider the perceived qualitative differences in ‘old vine’ fruit we must first define the term, and this begins with Phylloxera – the pest which decimated European vineyards throughout the 19th century. The damage caused and the efforts to combat and restore the wine industry during this time dictated a necessary shift in viticultural practices,…
Located 60 kilometres north-west of Vienna in the Weinviertel, Austria’s northernmost winegrowing region and its largest by both volume of production and geographically, Familie Mantler is and has always been a family-run operation since it was first established. For over 100 years the privately owned land was farmed to mixed agriculture, often changing speciality from one year to the next until 1977, when a then 18-year-old Karl Mantler…
Located in the Pontic village of Monopigado which sits around 500 metres above the port of Thessaloniki, Moschopolis exists in the shadow and magnificence of Mount Olympus. The winery was established by Dr. Georgios Germanis, a chemical soil specialist with decades of experience in both the vineyard and the cellar. Famed for his research and…
‘Biodynamic’ is a pretty common buzzword in winemaking, with roots dating back to the Second World War. It is based on the then cutting edge works of an Austrian Philosopher presented in 1924 – Rudolf Steiner – and centres around a holistic and homeopathic approach to farming. This approach forgoes the use of any inorganic…
The Zambartas Winery is the brainchild of the late Akis Zambartas. Revered as a legend in modern Cypriot winemaking, he was the first islander to formally study oenology, receiving a degree from the University of Montpellier, as well as a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Lyon. As head winemaker at the island’s KEO…
While this isn’t an exhaustive list, we have recently shipped some exquisite wines from Cyprus and sampling these was my first exposure to some of the indigenous varietals that many Cypriot winemakers are understandably so proud of, which form an integral part of their wines. Cyprus, along with Santorini, is one of the only European…
The idea for Lubanzi as we know it today, was birthed when co-founders Charlie Brain and Walker Brown were backpacking along South Africa’s Wild Coast in 2014. ‘Lubanzi’ is the name given to the wild dogs that roam the area, including the one which chose to match the boys stride for stride on their six-day,…
The intention of this feature is not to tell you how to cook, neither is it to convince you that this one bottle or that one bottle is the only partner to a particular dish. Rather, it is to encourage readers to think about why certain things work together; to enable you to make easy,…
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