It's an important year for the Sieni family from Montefioralle winery as they are celebrating 50 harvests this October. The winery was founded by Fernando's father back in 1964. He rented the property and land from the church which he then planted the vineyards on. Fernando finally purchased it from the winery in the mid 90's. Both Fernando's pa...

This month I am featuring wines from the area of Lake Garda that borders both the Veneto and Lombardy northern regions in Italy. In particular we're talking about the wines known as chiaretto, pronounced "key-ah-ret-oh". Lake Garda is actually the largest lake in Italy. If you've never been to Lake Garda it's a must see. It's such a beautiful p...

The wines I'm sharing with you today are made from the malvasia grape from Tasca d'Almerita on the island of Sicily. This was my first stop of the day and I was greeted by co-owner of the winery and VP, Giuseppe Tasca. Giuseppe, along with his brother Alberto and father Count Lucia Tasca, manage the operations of the winery today. Giuseppe greeted...

Vermentino is a grape that can be found in a number of regions within Italy and as if it's not hard enough to learn about all the indigenous grapes of Italy, but in certain regions it is known under a different name. This grape can be found in Tuscany, Piedmont where it's known as Favorita, Sardinia and Liguria where it's known as Pigato.

This month our Italian Food, Wine & Travel group is exploring verdicchio from all over Italy. One of the areas I am most familiar with when it comes to verdicchio is the region of Le Marche, which is located in central Italy. Le Marche has a long coastline along the Adriatic and touches 5 other regions to its west including Emilia Romagna to the...

This week I'm going to focus on the wines from Avellino in the Campania region of southwestern Italy. You may also know this area and coast by way of the Gulf of Napoli or one of my favorites, the stunning Amalfi Coast. If you haven’t been I strongly recommend adding it to your list next time you visit Italy.

The region of Basilicata is located in southern Italy surrounded by the regions of Puglia to the east, Campania to the north and Calabria to the south. It touches both the Gulf of Taranto as part of the Ionian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea. It’s one of the mountainous, if not the most mountainous region in southern Italy with Monte Vulture being a geo...

I'm a big fan of northern Italy, especially the Alpine region. Although I'm a big fan of many regions of Italy (who isn't?), I fell in love with the Alpine regions when I traveled to the Valle d'Aosta for my honeymoon.

Orvieto is a town in the region of Umbria, which is centrally located in Italy. It's almost halfway between Rome and Florence. The most popular wine of the Umbrian region is Orvieto, which is named after the beautiful hillside medieval town. Like Tuscany with its Chianti and Chianti Classico, Orvieto also has Orvieto and Orvieto Classico, which com...

As we approach the holidays it's the perfect time to pop some bubbly in celebrations, although do we really all need an excuse for bubbly or wine for that matter? Plus, they're highly versatile wines to pair with food. I recently tried some samples from the Bervini 1955 winery including their prosecco and rose spumante that I'm sharing with you tod...