Angelo gaja - The Wandering Palate

It is the change in the climate, characterized by long-lasting summer heat and lack of rainfall, which has caused the significant drop in the production of grapes in Italy’s 2012 vintage; for the same reason, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011 were low-production years as well. To this must now be also added the limited inventory of wine from previous vintage currently in the cellars of the wineries. In a short space of time, Italian wine has passed from a situation of perennial over-production to one of under-production. Read More >

Wine Feng Shui | Related to: Angelo gaja, Climate Change, Italy |

From a lost play by Eubulos, (c.405 BC - c.335 BC)
‘For sensible men I prepare only three kraters (large vase used to mix wine): one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home.

The fourth krater is not mine any more - it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is for madness and unconsciousness.’

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new.”

As uttered by the vitriolic restaurant critic Anton Ego, in the film “Ratatouille”, after his epiphany.