Basilicata - Divining the Future of Italian Wine in a Place that Time Forgot

If you could find a window into a world, where time hasn't moved so rapidly, where things are like they were a year, five or even 50 years ago, would you climb up and through it? And if so what would you expect to find?

Basilicata is one of those places on the wine trail in Italy that has kept some of the old ways, not discarding them for the latest iPhone or Windows upgrade. There’s something about the ancient in this place that has rooted, moored and isn’t going away anytime soon. And that’s a very good thing for Italian wine lovers.

Assessing the Controversial/ Disastrous/Fabulous Italian Wine Harvest of 2017

Here we are – November 5, 2017 – for the most part the Italian wine harvest is over. And while we’re months and years away from practically determining just how successful (or disastrous) the 2017 harvest was, that hasn’t kept journalists, bloggers, winemakers, even P.R. wonks, from shouting claims from their respective vantage points. Like nervous hens, tut-tutting over every oeuvre, we have heard that it is a “disaster,” a “perfect storm,” a “vintage the likes of which we haven’t seen since the end of World War II” and “Hey, it wasn’t all that bad!” So how bad (or good) was it? What happened? How about a 3-point harvest report pop quiz - let’s see what the experts say?

The Necromancer's Guide to Italian Wine

It all started with the Jewish prophet from Bethlehem, that turning water into wine piece of sorcery. How could we top that? After a couple of hundred years, we finally hacked it, and decided to turn that wine back into his blood, and so it has been for the last 1,700 or so years. Take that, Yeshua!

It was a pivotal moment in Italian wine necromancy, initiated by our little cadre of immortals, filched (or interpolated?) by the high priests of the Catholic Church in Rome. This, not the wine in Campania, not the Greeks in Calabria and Sicily, not the Etruscans. No, the New Testament era of Italian wine was transmitted by the monks and priests, alchemists, all of them. And guided by our immortal, unseen hands. And that is how we got to where we are today. Winemaking, traveling through time, as a dark art. Or at the very least, invisible.