The Quiet Work Behind a Sensory Evening
There’s a moment, just before guests walk in, when the room feels quietly ready. The glasses are set. The wines have already been opened and tasted more than once. Somewhere nearby, the chef is finishing a dish chosen not only because it would taste good with the wine, but because it would help the wine show a little more of itself. None of it happens by chance, and none of it happens quickly. When I put together an evening that brings wine, glassware, and food together, it usually takes longer than people expect. It begins with research—looking into glass shapes and volumes, reading about how a particular wine tends to behave, and then setting up side-by-side tastings of the same bottle in three or four different glasses. I take notes, step away, come back, and taste again. Some evenings I realize a wine that seemed promising on paper needs to be replaced. Other times a glass I was sure would work doesn’t, and the process starts over. Those hours of quiet tasting and reflection add up. They are not dramatic, but they are necessary if the wine is going to have a chance to show who it really is. The same measured pace applies to the food. Conversations with the chef and team are rarely settled in one sitting. We talk about texture, temperature, and acidity, then taste together, adjust, and taste again. A bright white might need the right amount of citrus or fat to keep its energy lively. A structured red might ask for a dish that echoes its depth without competing. Finding that balance takes time—sometimes several tries—until the combination feels right, not merely pleasant. I do this work because I love it. When you care deeply about the details, the hours spent researching, tasting, and rethinking don’t feel like work. They feel like listening. Still, I know that from the outside, the finished evening can look effortless. Guests see the glasses in place and the first pour. They don’t see the earlier evenings of notes, the second and third tastings, or the quiet decisions that shaped the table. That gap is understandable, yet it matters. Time lets each wine stand on its own and gives creativity room to emerge. What I hope people notice is a little spark of curiosity. When a wine arrives in a glass they weren’t expecting, they often pause—the kind that makes someone look again and wonder, “Wait, this is different.” That pause is useful. It invites people to slow down, smell again after the first sip, and realize the wine shows something specific about who it is. The food then joins the same conversation. Together they create a sequence that feels more complete than any single element would on its own. Most of the preparation stays invisible once the evening begins. That invisibility is part of why people underestimate the time investment. The research, the reflection, and the creative adjustments are quiet by nature. Yet every carefully chosen glass and every refined pairing comes from those hours. When you love the work, the time feels worthwhile—even necessary. In the evening, all that quiet preparation becomes something people can taste, notice, and remember. Afterward, I write about these evenings because the moments feel unfinished until they’re shared. Whether I’m hosting or simply there as a guest, the experience continues when I put it into words. A particular aroma that suddenly made sense once the food arrived, a glass that shifted the entire impression of a wine, a conversation that started because someone noticed something unexpected—these are the details that stay. Writing them down is a way of keeping the table open a little longer, so others can sit with the same questions and small discoveries—and, perhaps, understand a little more of the time and care that went into creating them.
Maria Cristina De Simone Avallone: Freedom, Certainty & Roses
When I first walked the vineyards of Villa Matilde last April, the landscape felt like a kind of paradise: green, still, and precise. Only later, sitting down with Maria Cristina De Simone Avallone, did I understand how much of that stillness was earned. She grew up here, among the vines of the ancient Ager Falernus, surrounded by women who taught her that grapes are never just grapes. To meet her is to meet someone who knows both the pull of inheritance and the discipline of making it her own. The Winery Villa Matilde Avallone lies in Cellole, in the province of Caserta, held between the Tyrrhenian coast and the quiet slopes of the extinct Roccamonfina volcano. This is the heart of the Ager Falernus, home to Falerno, the wine Pliny, Virgil, and Horace once praised and the world later believed lost to phylloxera. In the 1960s, a Neapolitan lawyer named Francesco Paolo Avallone refused to accept that loss. From a handful of surviving biotypes of Falanghina, Aglianico, and Piedirosso, he rebuilt not just a wine, but a place. He named the estate for his wife, Matilde. Today the family tends three Campanian landscapes: Maria Cristina, daughter of Maria Ida Avallone, now leads as head winemaker and head of production. She is the third generation to shape that vision, and she brings to it her own sense of style and precision. For the wider landscape of my spring visit during Campania Stories, see my earlier piece: [link] A Calling Heard at Night Her story with the estate began almost at once. Maria Cristina arrived at Villa Matilde when she was ten days old. Her mother and grandparents carried her early into the cellar, the vineyard, and the restaurant. What stayed with her was never a lesson in grape varieties. It was her mother’s way of telling the story: not just Falanghina, but the people behind it. As a girl, she dreamed of becoming a veterinary surgeon. She was drawn to animals and to the idea of rescuing them in southern Italy. Then, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, she found herself torn between winemaking and law. Her mother sensed the hesitation. She did not argue. She simply invited her daughter to a night harvest at Sessa Aurunca. In the darkness among the vines, the answer became clear. The tenderness she once felt for animals never left her. It found another living subject. Wine, she told me, is like an animal. It changes. It asks to be understood over time. She describes Villa Matilde as an Italian love story. It belongs as much to her grandmother as to her grandfather, a man who understood the importance of the women around him. The Piano in the Cellar Nowhere is that love story more present than in the cellar itself. When I asked which object from her childhood still speaks to her, Maria Cristina did not hesitate. She named the piano that stands there among the barrels. It belonged to her grandmother, a professional pianist from Genoa who set aside her career to support the family and the winery. For Maria Cristina, the piano is a reminder of presence. It is also a quiet instruction to keep going and not look back. Her own days hold to a simple rhythm. She has coffee with her mother, who lives just across the way. She walks with her dog, Yuma. She reads, to step away from the pressure that builds as harvest nears. And at sunset over the vineyards, she feels grounded and grateful. It is the same view that struck me in April, and I understood then why it holds her. Freedom, Yellow, Rose When I asked her to describe her wines in three words, Maria Cristina did not reach for technical language. She answered with her life. Freedom. She had to fight to be taken seriously as a woman, and she believes everyone should be allowed to be themselves. Yellow. The happiness of sun on skin, the feeling she wants a glass to give. Rose. The women of her life: her mother, aunts, sister, cousins, grandmother. Beauty and strength together. Petals, and thorns. It struck me that she could have been describing herself. For her, wine is closer to jazz than to a fixed score. She comes from contemporary dance and knows how a melody can shift beneath you. Each person, she insists, will hear the bottle in their own way. That openness is not a weakness. It is the wine’s heart, and perhaps hers too. Her imagined dinner table carries the same spirit. She would invite three women: the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, Matilda, and her grandmother. She would ask them whether they would be proud of the freedom women have reached by 2026. For Gentileschi, she would pour an Aurunca wine alongside vegetable soup, for strength and personality in the glass. For her grandmother, a white Falerno with potatoes, the comfort of a traditional Neapolitan table. Still the Work to Be Done That question of freedom is not only a dinner-party thought. Campania has changed, and leadership is no longer out of reach for women. Yet the old reflex lingers. In her own cellar, Maria Cristina told me, male employees sometimes still turn to her male colleagues first. A generation earlier, her mother met the same skepticism selling wine at twenty. The industry is moving forward, but the work is not finished. What still needs to be won is true respect as a leader, not merely as a symbol. Her advice to women entering wine is practical and unsparing. Be proud of who you are. Study. Work with your hands. Smell. Taste widely. Keep an open mind, and keep talking to people. Isolation, she made clear, is not a strategy. What Harvest Asks Her eyes are already on what comes next. She wants to keep exploring Falanghina, a grape that changes its face from one Campanian hillside to the next. When we spoke, she was also weighing the closure. Traditional cork still holds a certain romance
A Hill, An Astronaut, & A Glass With Fritz Wieninger
We arrived at Weingut Wieninger just as the sun reached its peak, golden light over the vines. Smiling faces waited in a gentle line for something crisp and cold. Long tables stretched between the rows, and the view ran all the way to Vienna and the Danube. After the train and the city, this was the welcome: not a grand hall, but a picnic table under a shade tree, a glass in hand, and the rooftops unfolding below. If I could choose, every winery visit would begin like this. A Hillside That Belongs to Everyone The afternoon was thanks to a friend. After VieVinum in May, Pasi Ketolainen MW — a friend, and a former colleague of Fritz — spoke about Nussberg with such conviction that I made a note to come during the ÖTW Single Vineyard Summit. Standing there in the sun, I realized he had described it exactly. Nothing exaggerated. What caught me first was not the view, extraordinary as it is. It was the people. Families in easy conversation, children weaving between tables, the small music of glasses over the grass. Fritz Wieninger’s hospitality was unmistakable from the first minute, and it was clearly not a show for visitors. This is where locals come to spend an afternoon among the vines. To understand the place, you have to understand the heuriger. In Austria it is the grower’s own tavern: their wine, usually with simple, honest food. The word means “this year’s,” a nod to the new wine, and the tradition goes back centuries. A pine branch over the door once announced that it was ready. Around Vienna, heurigen are a way of life — casual, convivial, and built on the idea that the best place to drink a wine is as close to the vineyard as possible. A City With Vineyards Vienna is one of the only capitals with serious winegrowing inside its limits. Wieninger farms both sides of the Danube: the sandy, loess-rich Bisamberg to the north, and the limestone slopes of the Nussberg across the river, close enough that the vines look down on the rooftops. That closeness is why single vineyards matter here. Growers knew their hills by name long before any classification. Limestone and sandstone, steep sun-facing terraces, a cooling breeze off the river: the Nussberg does not make the wine of the flatter, sandier Bisamberg. In 2017, twelve Viennese vineyards were classified Erste Lage for the first time. Four of them belong to Wieninger. Tasting from the slope in front of me was the gentlest possible introduction. An Astronaut, a Mother, and a Calling Over lunch he told stories, and the first one made me grin. “When I was a small boy, I wanted to be an astronaut,” he said, “and discover new civilizations.” He pictured himself on the Enterprise, beside Captain Kirk. The mission changed because of his mother. She was among the first women to graduate from the enology program at Klosterneuburg, at a time when the wine world was overwhelmingly male, and she held her ground. Around her graduation she had friends over, and young Fritz had been coached. If anyone asked what he wanted to be, he knew the line: “I want to go to winemaking school like my mom.” It proved a wise answer. He loved to learn, and his father encouraged the path, promising it would open doors. The spark came in the second year, when the winemaking lessons began. From the first day he was captivated by how sticky, sweet grape juice becomes something elegant. He took the question home. Cherry wine in his bedroom. Rice wine. Anything with sugar, fermented to see what it would become. Some of it exploded. All of it was messy. He had never even tasted rice wine, and it fascinated him most. That, he told us, was the moment he knew. He had yet to learn how demanding the vineyard could be: cold mornings, relentless sun, nature’s unpredictability. At first all he wanted was to make wine. The rest came with time. “A wine’s story starts in the vineyard itself, with the quiet questions of what to plant, and where. It begins long before the cellar door.” He took over the family estate in 1987, after Klosterneuburg and a vintage in California, and turned a traditional tavern into one of Austria’s most admired urban wineries. I can’t help thinking a woman who graduated in a man’s world, and a boy who rehearsed his line for her guests, had a great deal to do with that. The Winemaker Behind the Wines Fritz farms biodynamically, certified organic and biodynamic since 2011, and part of respekt-BIODYN. Healthy living soil, biodiversity between the rows, a lower yield if that is the price of quality. Slower work, much of it by hand. He is also Vienna’s great champion of Wiener Gemischter Satz. The idea is as old as farming: many varieties in one vineyard, grown together, picked together, pressed together, so the wine speaks with one voice. When he began, nobody wanted it. Tavern wine. The worst of the worst. “In my beginnings, I did not want to have to do with the Buschenschank wine,” he told us. “Because I knew this is for my image, not good.” He bottled instead, and sold to the top restaurants. It worked. People came looking for the wines, then for the place. In 2013 Gemischter Satz received its own DAC. Today it is Vienna’s signature. In the Glass Four bottles on the table, each with the ÖTW Erste Lage seal, all from the Nussberg: three from the Rosengartel, the heart of the hill, and one from the Ulm, on the steep southern slope toward the river. The Rosengartel back label puts it simply. The Nussberg has long been Vienna’s best-known vineyard, and at its center lies the Rosengartel, the Filetstück, the prime cut, planted in part to ancient Riesling. Ried Rosengartel Riesling 2024. The newcomer, quick and bright. Cool limestone, citrus blossom, a shiver of freshness
Does This Glass Taste Like Here? Inside Austria’s Erste Lagen
Some moments in a wine life make the room itself part of the tasting. Grafenegg was one of those. I recently attended the ÖTW (Österreichische Traditionsweingüter) Single Vineyard Summit at Schloss Grafenegg, Austria in the former riding school now reborn as the Rudolf Buchbinder Hall, and spent my days walking the quiet, concentrated aisles of Austria’s most demanding professional tasting. Six glasses at a time. No chatter at the table. Just the wines, the sites, and the people who farm them. Around 600 ÖTW Erste Lagen wines from 92 estates and 145 classified vineyards, plus another wave from Burgenland, the STK growers of Styria, and Vinea Wachau. And for the first time, every bottle on the tables was certified organic, biodynamic, or Nachhaltig Austria. That’s not a footnote. That’s the statement. First Stop: Wieninger, Above Vienna We arrived in Vienna and headed straight to Weingut Wieninger, and the week began the way I wish every week would: outdoors, in the vineyards, on a gorgeous summer day. To find Wieninger, you leave the Vienna of palaces and coffeehouses behind and head to Stammersdorf, a village-like corner of the city’s northern edge at the foot of the Bisamberg, lined with heurigen, the traditional wine taverns. The winery began as one. Fritz Wieninger grew up in the family heuriger, serving the wines made by his mother, one of the first women to graduate from the enology program at Klosterneuburg. He took over the family estate in 1987 and turned a tavern into one of Austria’s most admired urban wineries, farming vines on both sides of the Danube: the sandy, loess-rich Bisamberg and the limestone slopes of the Nussberg. Fritz is also a great champion of Wiener Gemischter Satz, Vienna’s traditional field blend, and when the ÖTW classified twelve Viennese vineyards as Erste Lage for the first time in 2017, four were his. We tasted and lunched under a shaded tree at a picnic table in the vines, with the charming Fritz telling stories about his family, about the beauty of the Nussberg overlooking the city, and about much more. It was the gentlest possible introduction to Erste Lagen, and my coup de coeur was the Wiener Gemischter Satz DAC Ried Rosengartel Nussberg 2023. Many varieties, grown together, picked together, and speaking in a single voice, from a site whose wines were among the most sought-after in Habsburg days. A perfect first lesson for a week about place. An Open-Air Overture The week opened not with wine but with music: an evening concert under the open sky at the Wolkenturm that set an exquisitely romantic tone for everything still to come. The Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini performed Cimarosa’s overture to Il matrimonio segreto and Mozart’s Piano Concertos KV 467 and KV 466, with Rudolf Buchbinder leading from the piano after Riccardo Muti withdrew from conducting on doctor’s orders ahead of a necessary medical procedure. Sitting there, before a single glass had been poured, I felt the week find its register: precise, unhurried, and quietly moving. The same qualities I would spend the following days chasing in the glass. Before the Hall All good things begin with bubbles, and this week was no exception. Before the induction, before a single note went into my notebook, we were handed a glass from a magnum of Malat Brut Nature Reserve. A long line of glasses glowed pale gold under the bar lights. Brut Nature means zero dosage: nothing added, nothing hidden. Bone-dry, bright, and the perfect first statement for a week devoted to letting places speak for themselves. Then came Inside ÖTW, an induction at Mörwald Gutshof in Feuersbrunn. Two hours with Michael, who told the story of an association now 35 years old, founded by ten producers from the Kamptal and Kremstal who wanted to bring order to Austria’s tangle of vineyard names. Today it counts 91 members and 3,600 hectares. Of Austria’s 4,300 named single vineyards, just 145 are ÖTW, all of them certified organic, biodynamic, or Nachhaltig Austria. This is Austria’s Premier Cru, the Erste Lage, on the same level as Beaune, with the Grand Cru still to come. The ÖTW waited 15 years to get here, and the system is built to adapt as the climate does. My favorite line of the morning was about the people behind it. Winemakers, Michael said, have to react like jazz musicians, in the moment. And the passion driving it all is simple: to make wine that brings people together. Let The Tasting Begin The tasting format itself is deceptively simple and completely rigorous. You build your own flights. You set your own pace. The winemakers pour. You taste in silence, then you talk, really talk, once you step away from the table. That mix of focus and human contact is exactly why this summit matters to me. Why single vineyards matter? Because they are a bet that place outranks brand. In this room you are not comparing producers, you are comparing ground: Heiligenstein against Käferberg, Loibenberg against Kellerberg, the same grape, sometimes the same winemaker’s hand, pulled apart by nothing but where the vines are rooted. A single vineyard won’t let a good winemaker hide an average site, or an average winemaker waste a great one. The glass has nowhere to hide. That, more than any score, is what keeps me coming back. Four Tastings in the Hall The hall offered four tastings, each a different slice of Austria. The White-Wine Spine. Kremstal Riesling, linear and stony, made me sit up straighter. Then Kamptal arrived with extra length and breeding, and I wrote in the margin, half laughing: crazy for aristocratic Kamptal. A Heiligenstein Riesling had the lift of youth and the gravity of old sandstone. Carnuntum and the Wachau. A pulse of red after all that white precision, then the Wachau’s tension, salt, and lift. Standing with Martin Mittelbach of Tegernseerhof, rustic romance became the phrase I kept circling: not rustic as simple, but as lived-in beauty. Widening the Map. Wagram’s loess generosity, Weinviertel’s pepper and pull, and Styrian guests with a Zieregg Chardonnay and Sauvignon
Al Dente: Alwin Jurtschitsch and the Stone Beneath the Kamptal
Some winemakers talk about their wines. Alwin Jurtschitsch talks about the ground beneath them, and about time: how it is made, how it erodes, and how very little of it you have when the grapes are ready. He talks about terroir the way a farmer talks about weather. Not as a marketing word, but as the thing you live with every single day. After my time at the ÖTW Single Vineyard Summit, and after hearing him talk through the geology of his vineyards, I understood why his Kamptal wines kept pulling me back to the glass. They feel cool even when they are generous, composed rather than showy, and they linger long after the glass is empty. An Eye-Opening Visit This was my first visit to Kamptal, and it opened my wine eyes. It didn’t hand me a few new facts so much as change the scale at which I look: from the region, to the valley, to a single slope, to the stone underfoot. Time with Alwin made one thing plain. The Kamptal is not one terroir with a few famous names attached. It is many terroirs, folded into a single valley, and the people who farm it know each fold by heart. A Valley of Many Soils That variety is what makes the Kamptal so special. At around 3,000 hectares, the region is almost three times the size of the Wachau, and its geology runs the full range. In the west, around Zöbing and Kammern, steep terraced slopes of primary rock dominate: gneiss, mica schist, amphibolite, the glittering silvery mica of Gföhler gneiss. Moving east toward Langenlois, Gobelsburg and the Danube, the hills soften and the soil turns to deep, nutrient-rich loess left behind by the ice ages, with clay in places like Strass. Between them sit oddities that barely exist anywhere else, such as the amphibolite of Schenkenbichl, and, at the top of it all, the Permian desert sandstone of Heiligenstein. The climate stitches it together. Cool, damp air flows in from the Waldviertel to the north and west, while warm, dry Pannonian air arrives from the southeast, and that daily push and pull of warm days and cool nights gives the wines their aromatic tension. The old rule of thumb in the valley follows the ground: Riesling on the lean, terraced upper slopes, Grüner Veltliner on the deeper loess and loam below. Stand on a single ridge and you can walk across several geological eras in an afternoon. As Alwin would later put it, that’s why one hill can make so many different wines. A House Older Than Its Name The roots of Weingut Jurtschitsch run deeper than the family name. In Langenlois, parts of the estate’s cellars reach back to the 14th century, and its beginnings are tied to the nearby Franciscan monastery that first worked these vines. The Jurtschitsch family acquired the estate in 1868 and has run it ever since, most recently the three brothers Edwin, Paul and Karl, before the next generation stepped in. That generation is Alwin, Edwin’s son, and his wife Stefanie, who comes from the Gunderloch winemaking family of Rheinhessen. Nearly two decades ago the two of them took the reins of a historic Kamptal house with holdings in some of the valley’s best sites, and began asking what it would look like to let those sites speak without interruption. Below Ground: A Cellar Older Than the Estate If the vineyards are the geology of the estate, the cellar is its memory. Weingut Jurtschitsch sits in the heart of Langenlois, and beneath it lies an enormous natural cellar roughly 700 years old, with parts dating to the 14th century, that once belonged to the Franciscan monastery. It was dug deep underground, where the earth keeps its own cool, steady temperature without any help from machinery. Above it, the former harvest farm, the Sonnhof, dates to the 16th century, and the old press house carries the same weight of time. The estate did not stop with history. In 2000 a new terraced cellar with a modern press house was added alongside it, so that centuries-old stone and contemporary craft now work under one roof. Inside, the vessels are as varied as the soils: huge old foudres, smaller barrels, stainless steel, small tanks. The wines ferment spontaneously, and sulfur is added only before bottling, in moderate doses. The cellar is built to protect time, not to speed it up, which suits a house whose whole philosophy is patience. Almost No Makeup What they built from that inheritance is less revolution than clarification. The farming is organic. Since 2006, the wines have been fermented with native yeast. The Erste Lagen rest in large old wood, and the cellar approach is deliberately light: almost no makeup, as I wrote in my notes. There is room left in the vineyards for the life that grows beside and between the vines, and you taste that vitality in the fruit. One small story captures the spirit of the place. Among their Heiligenstein holdings, Alwin and Stefanie found a little plot with completely different vegetation from the rest of the hill, reeds growing where you would expect vines. They bottle it unfined and unfiltered as Quelle. Because it sits outside the formal boundaries, it legally cannot carry the Heiligenstein name on the label, yet it is, by every account, one of that famous vineyard’s purest voices. Four Hills, Four Temperaments The heart of the estate is a handful of ÖTW Erste Lage sites. I met them in the ÖTW tasting room, six glasses at a time, and each one introduced itself differently. Heiligenstein is the Kamptal’s most famous vineyard and the home of the estate’s Riesling. Alwin makes a single-vineyard Riesling from the whole hill, then two microparcels that pull it apart. Side by side, the three read like siblings who share a face but not a temperament. Käferberg, the cool head. The hill above Langenlois, and to Grüner Veltliner what Heiligenstein is to Riesling. In the glass: cool
Milena Pepe: Quiet Determination
Some people tell you who they are in the first five minutes. Milena Pepe of Tenuta Cavalier Pepe did it in her first few sentences. She spoke about the land and the work plainly and surely, the way someone does when she has already made her choices and is still glad she made them. Her story starts in Belgium, winds through the vineyards of France, and ends in the hills of Irpinia, where she arrived more than twenty years ago. Meeting her, I sensed someone who knew exactly what was expected of her and decided early on to go her own way. A Father’s Return Tenuta Cavalier Pepe sits in the middle of Irpinia, between Luogosano and Sant’Angelo all’Esca, in the green hills of Avellino. The name honors Milena’s father, Angelo Pepe. He left Italy as a young man and made his life in Belgium, where he promoted Italian food and culture and was named Cavaliere del Lavoro. He brought what he earned there back here. His family had always grown grapes and sold them to others. Angelo wanted to bottle his own. When Milena took over in 2005, the estate began making wine from all three of Irpinia’s DOCGs (Fiano di Avellino, Greco di Tufo, and Taurasi) along with other native grapes. Today, the estate also has a restaurant and a place to stay, so visitors can eat, drink, and sleep among the vines. (For more on the vineyards, the vertical tastings, and my visit during Campania Stories, see my earlier piece: Campania Stories: Initial Sips — Campi Flegrei & Irpinia.) From Brussels to Irpinia Her father’s story was about leaving and coming back. Milena’s was about arriving somewhere she had only heard about. She grew up in Brussels with an Italian father and a Belgian mother, switching languages at the dinner table and learning how a restaurant runs while she studied marketing and management. Her father talked about Irpinia constantly, about the vineyards he was bringing back to life, and little by little those stories pulled her south. She did not go unprepared. First came wine marketing in France, then viticulture and enology, then hands-on work with producers including Chapoutier in the Rhône. In 2005, at twenty-five, she moved to Irpinia to run the estate’s first harvest under its own label. Day and Night Those first years took everything she had. Milena worked day and night, learning every slope of the land while building a business from scratch. France had taught her two things she still swears by. One is discipline in the vineyard. The other is tasting the grapes together as a team and deciding together when they are ready. Every year as harvest nears, she still walks her crew through it. Bottling an estate’s own wine in a place used to selling grapes takes skill, and it takes years. It also meant facing pressures unrelated to the vines. Two Jobs at Once Milena is frank about what women in wine still carry. There is the work, and then there is everything expected of a woman at home, and the two do not divide neatly. On top of that, she was an outsider, a woman who had grown up in another country and arrived in a close-knit rural place. What has helped her most is other women in the business. She leans on networks where women share what they have been through, swap what they know, and feel less alone. We both agreed these groups are how women in wine get through the hard years and keep growing. Hills Worth the Trip She brings the same stubbornness to Irpinia itself. The altitude, the cool nights, and the soils give these wines their tension and their ability to age for years. But getting travelers to come here is hard work. The roads and services are still catching up, and the Amalfi Coast is only a couple of hours away, drawing the crowds. Milena is practical about it. She gives international guests the comfort they expect, but she won’t dress Irpinia up as something it isn’t. She also has strong feelings about how we farm. She says industrial agriculture has cost us flavor and knowledge. Small, local wine made from its own ground keeps that knowledge in use, so the next generation can learn it by doing. The 2011 Taurasi I tasted that idea in a glass. During my spring visit, one wine kept pulling me back: the 2011 Taurasi DOCG. It didn’t show off. It simply held my attention and wouldn’t let go. Dried cherry, violets, and leather moved through fine, long tannins, and each layer took its time to appear. The longer I sat with it, the more it gave. It reminded me of Milena: strong without raising its voice, and generous with anyone patient enough to listen. Coming Home Milena Pepe chose to come back to a place she had first known only through her father’s stories. She arrived trained and ready, and she has spent twenty years building something lasting in a region more used to supplying grapes than making a name for itself. Brussels restaurants, French vineyards, and Taurasi’s long patience all went into it. Now she is helping Irpinia imagine what it could become. I keep thinking of her alongside that 2011 Taurasi. Neither one needs to be loud to fill a room. In the cool hills of Irpinia, where good wine refuses to be rushed, Milena is building her own story. It honors her father, who had the courage to leave. And it honors her own decision, maybe the braver one, to come home.
Thirty-Four Countries, One Table.
Valladolid, and the Table That Kept Growing from the VinoInfluencers World Awards 2026 This was my first time at the VinoInfluencers World Awards, and I arrived in Valladolid not quite knowing what to expect — only that the week had promised to be magical. It kept that promise before I’d even unpacked. The wine train pulled in and the week began the way the best wine weeks always do: not with trophies, but with people. A bus met us at the station and carried us to the International School of Cooking, where we shared a welcome breakfast, collected our credentials, and listened to a few words from the Head of Tourism for Castilla y León. Then came the first small secret of the week: we’d be sent into the vineyards with our destinations unannounced, so the land could introduce itself before anyone told us its name. Two of those afternoons have already made their way onto the page — the gates swinging open onto Dehesa de los Canónigos on Ribera del Duero’s Golden Mile, and the color and clarete of Cigales at Bodegas Sinforiano. But what stays with me most isn’t any single stop. It’s the shape of the days around them — the way Castilla y León gathered a room full of the world for three days and nights, and how, somewhere in the middle of it, a nomination quietly found its place. Never at the center. Always among friends. An Evening of Roses and Choreography The welcome evening at Villa Augusta Spa & Garden in Arroyo de la Encomienda brought roses, chandeliers, and the gentle choreography of an event determined to make you feel beautiful while still getting you on the bus by nine. VWA Connect brought wineries and communicators together from around the globe, conversation flowing easily across tables not yet set for ceremony. We made a few new discoveries that night, chief among them Bodegas Marqués de Cáceres’ Los Altares Gran Reserva Blanco de Guarda 2016 — creamy, yet lifted by a refreshing thread of acidity, finishing long, poised, and wonderfully complex. There was also an impromptu Sherry tasting with Ruth Amaya of Vinos de Jerez, the kind of unplanned moment that so often turns out to be the best one of the night. Wine Routes, and the Scent of Harvest Friday sent us out again along the Wine Routes, each group following its own thread of adventure, the scent of harvest still hanging in the air. By seven we were back; by 8:15, another bus carried us into Valladolid, to the Tourist Office and Exhibition Hall of San Benito, for the pre-awards gala. There were speeches, meet-and-greets, and that particular hush of anticipation that settles in before a big night. One of my personal highlights, every time, is seeing Laura Catena — one of my favorite women in wine, and a woman with a rare gift for making everyone in the room feel welcome, her smile as infectious as her energy. That evening was also when the room cast its vote for Nos Impulsa Castilla y León — not a jury prize, but a peer prize honoring charisma, professionalism, commitment, and camaraderie. The winners would be revealed at the gala, and by the time we left, the anticipation for the next day was electric. Stepping outside for a breath of fresh air brought its own discovery: Javier Abrego’s Re-Cordis, a “fever dream” Malbec, juicy and vibrant, bursting with blackberry, ripe plum, violet, and a whisper of spice — plush on the palate, beautifully balanced, utterly moreish. It was the kind of wine that makes you pause mid-conversation and quietly go back for another glass. The label tells its own story too: a romantic scene of Javier’s family universe, from his father down to his daughter, Catalina. Beautiful, in every sense. A Sea of White, and a Few Surprise Pours Saturday opened with the Prelude Awards at Sotoverde, sunlight catching in the glass before anyone had changed for the evening. The crowd moved in a sea of white between tapas, MasterChef Carlos Alba’s oyster creations, laughter, and wine samplings gathered from across Spain — with a few surprises tucked in along the way. Luis XIV was expressive, ripe dark fruit meeting gentle spice and a polished finish. The Fondillón offered dried fig, raisin, and toasted nuts against a balanced sweetness, while the Fondillón Gran Solera 1980 was utterly captivating — layers of date, caramel, walnut, and orange peel unfolding one after another. These were wines built for sipping slowly, between conversations, while the afternoon gathered itself around us. A welcome change of pace arrived from Bolivia: high-altitude wines from Tarija showing freshness, concentration, and elegance. My personal star among them was the Campos de Solana Esther Ortiz Petit Verdot — blackberry, black plum, violet, and spice, with fine tannins, lively acidity, and a long, polished finish. Pure high-altitude elegance, the kind of wine that seems to say, quietly, look at me, and wonder. The Gala The grand finale was the VinoInfluencers Gala itself, and it unfolded exactly as galas do: a green-carpet arrival, photographs among nominees and invitees, and the unmistakable sense that it was finally, actually time. Music and entertainment carried the evening forward, building toward ten gold cups celebrating ten different ways of telling the story of wine — style, travel, marketing, communication, consulting, events, education, sommellerie, gastronomy, and the prize chosen by the room itself. My name was among the nominees for Wine Educator Innovation. The award went elsewhere. But winning, I’ve learned, was never really the point. What stayed with me instead was a quieter kind of recognition — for the journey itself: the long hours, the leap from project management into wine, a young family waiting at home, and the courage it took to start from scratch in a place not exactly known for vines. This calling still draws me forward. I suspect it always will. As the hall emptied, the foyer filled. The Wine Experience began — tables from participating
Cigales in Color: A Day at Bodegas Sinforiano
Some winery visits are about tasting. This one felt like stepping into the heart of what Cigales has always meant. Cigales is one of those rare Spanish regions where rosado is not a seasonal afterthought, but the very soul of the place. For generations, clarete was the tradition here: red and white grapes grown side by side, harvested and fermented together. The DO now produces reds and other styles, but the heartbeat remains pink. That sense of identity greets you as soon as you arrive. At Bodegas Sinforiano, tradition and innovation move together. The family cares for bush vines that have seen more than a century of seasons, spread across three valleys. About 100 hectares are farmed organically, with a portion certified, and the modern cellar—first filled in 2004—sits above the old underground cave where earlier generations worked. The winery runs with care for the land, from energy use to water treatment. Beneath the easy smiles and laughter, there is a steady, practiced hand guiding it all. Then came that joyful kind of chaos that only harvest can bring, the sort that calls for celebration. We climbed into jeeps and bumped along sunbaked roads toward the oldest vineyards—bush vines that have seen 105 harvests. This is where the rosado story starts, slow and steady. Josan, our colorful host for the day, welcomed us with a knowing smile and hinted at surprises. Most grapes had already been picked, but a few clusters remained, almost as if they were waiting for us. We were invited to harvest, taste, and enjoy the fruits of our work over a traditional lunch among the vines, with another surprise waiting back at the winery. With pruning shears ready, we paired up and grabbed our buckets. Before we started, Josan paused to explain why this place and its rosado are so important. Eight grape varieties, both white and red, are picked together from these old bush vines and co-fermented to create a clarete rosé that could only come from Cigales. This is not a pale, delicate rosé, but a wine with vivid color, bright fruit, and a sense of history in every glass. The harvest is timed for freshness, and when you open a bottle, it offers pleasure and energy that linger long after the first sip. After picking, we gathered for lunch right there among the vines. Plates of local cheese, spicy chorizo, and slices of pan candeal—the dense, white Castilian bread with its tight crumb—were passed around, perfect for catching every bit of flavor. Glasses of Sinfo clarete, with its orange label, shone bright and cool in the heat of the Castilian sun. Sinfo Rosado This is the wine that defines the house. Its deep strawberry-pink color catches the eye. Ripe red fruit leads the way, with a touch of fennel and peach, and a lively acidity that keeps it all in balance. It is a picnic wine with backbone. Once opened, the bottle empties quickly, and at our table, no one wanted it to end. After the harvest, we returned to the winery for a tasting of four rosado wines. The formal lineup, La versatilidad del rosado, was led by Josan Solano Ávila, whose warmth and humor made each wine feel like a new discovery rather than a lesson. Liala Espumoso Rosé Brut Nature This is the first sparkling rosado from DO Cigales. The bubbles are fine, the palate dry and crisp. Pink fruit and a touch of chalk lead to a clean, refreshing finish. Rosado with bubbles, and it shines. Quelías Rosé 2025 This wine is all about elegance. Five months on lees give it subtlety and depth. Pale in color, precise on the palate, with notes of citrus blossom and stone. It is the quiet wine that lingers longest in the glass. Sinfo Rosado Fermentado en Barrica 2023 This is rosado with the soul of a red. Oak fermentation and aging bring grip and spice, but the fruit remains at the center. It is a serious, structured pink—made for the table. Liala Clarete 2020 This wine honors their beginnings. An old-vine field blend, aged in Spanish oak, it shows a deeper color and flavors of dried strawberry, earth, and gentle maturity. Here is that joyful madness, bottled. Josan invited us outside for the next surprise. Since we had picked the grapes, we were handed the chance to stomp them as well, and taste the juice we pressed. We laughed, feet in a wooden bucket, tasting juice still warm from the sun. This was my first harvest, my first grape stomp, and it was harder than I imagined. You need a partner to steady you, the fruit is cold beneath your feet, and that first rush of juice is something you never forget. Josan and the family toasted our visit and handed out glass charms as keepsakes. Every detail felt thoughtful. The grill sent up the scent of lamb and blood sausage, and soon we were back in the winery for lunch, music, and dancing. It was the kind of afternoon that explains why families keep returning to this work, even when the easier path would be to stop. At Sinforiano, rosado is more than a specialty—it is a way of life. The family tends their old mixed vineyards with care, harvests for the style they believe in, and welcomes visitors to share in the process. Here, heritage and celebration are woven together, with tradition and innovation moving side by side. In a country celebrated for Tempranillo reds, Cigales has held fast to its rosado roots. Clarete remains a living memory, and freshness is something you taste, not just a word on a label. Pink finale I arrived as a visitor and left with grape juice on my feet and a clearer sense of why this region endures. In Cigales, rosado is not an afterthought. It is rooted in family, tradition, and a future that can sparkle, age, or remain in the old mixed vineyards. Sinforiano keeps this spirit alive, always remembering the table—the pan
Secret Gates: An Afternoon at Dehesa de los Canónigos
We set out with VinoInfluencers, the road ahead a mystery. The destinations remained secret, and that sense of not knowing brought a quiet thrill to the air, heightening every moment. When the gates finally opened, the purpose behind the secrecy revealed itself. A Basque farmhouse stands quietly on the Golden Mile of Ribera del Duero. Pines and vines share the same golden light, and the scent of harvest lingers in the air. Dehesa de los Canónigos does not announce itself. Instead, it invites you in, letting the land and its stories speak first. This stretch of river between Pesquera and Valbuena earned its name honestly. The Duero cuts a high, spare valley. Nights fall cold. Tempranillo — Tinto Fino — finds the tension that made Ribera famous. Cascajo underfoot: gravel, sand, soil that makes a vine work. Across the water, Vega Sicilia. The two estates have been speaking for generations. Dehesa was once church land, named for the twenty-two canons of the Cathedral of Valladolid. The Lecanda family built the Basque farmhouse that still stands; Eloy would found Vega Sicilia, and his brother Teodosio inherited this bank of the river. For years the fruit crossed the water. Then the Cid family took the estate in 1931. Luis Sanz Busto and María Luz Cid brought it home, planted more vines, and — after years of selling grapes to that legendary neighbor — kept the story in their own bottle—first vintage: 1989. The motto still sounds like a handshake: antes uvas que cubas—vine before barrel. Sixty-five hectares of vineyard are nestled within a wider world of forest and farmland. Tinto Fino forms the heart of it all, with Cabernet, Merlot, Garnacha, and Albillo Mayor woven in. The fourth generation is here now, with Belén Sanz Cid guiding the cellar. This was the journey we were welcomed into, not simply a tour but a family opening their door and sharing their world. Elena Intyakova guided us through rows of Tempranillo, the vines still heavy with fruit, clusters just beginning to yield to harvest. Inside the house, Julio Galán’s sculptures and installations appear at every turn—dreamlike figures, echoes of Mexican Baroque, folk memory, and a touch of New York grit. The estate seems to gather kindred spirits as thoughtfully as it gathers barrels. We came to a door carved in the shape of a Tempranillo leaf and stepped into the barrel room. One by one, we signed a barrel to mark our visit, our names joining the oak—a guest book written in scent and memory. There, Elena told us about the Godfather of the Harvest. Each year the family chooses a Spanish figure who shares their values. A special barrel is set aside. Years later — five, when the wine is ready — it is bottled and sold at a private auction, and the money goes to a cause the godfather names. Journalists, artists, public voices have stood in that role. What began as a gesture has become a house ritual: one harvest, one name, one barrel that leaves the cellar as care. There, among the barrels, they poured Luzianilla 2022, Belén’s clarete. Wild strawberry and crushed raspberry rose from the glass, with a hint of rose and sour cherry, followed by the subtle mineral thread of old vines and cascajo. As fresh as a rosé, as deep as a red—Belén crafted it so you never have to choose. That glass has lingered in my memory ever since. It should have been enough. It wasn’t. Lunch in the garden felt like a kind of magic. Every delicacy the land could offer found its way to the table. Flamenco music drifted between the roses. Two wines were poured under the open sky. Dehesa de los Canónigos 2023, 15 meses en barrica is the house in a glass. Blackberry and dark cherry, licorice and warm oak, thyme and the Duero wind. Velvet tannin. Honest acidity. Generous, grounded, already at ease. Solideo Reserva 2022 is reserved for the years Belén trusts enough to call by this name. Plum and black cherry steeped in cedar, cocoa, a thread of mint and rosemary. Silk over structure. Long. The kind of finish that makes conversation fall away for a second — then come back softer. Three wines. One house.The cellar held its memories. The garden sang with life. Once, this estate sent its grapes across the river. Later, the family chose to keep the fruit and begin their own story. After a loss too heavy to name, Belén returned to the cellar, and still, every door was open to us. Wine has a way of gathering people, of making strangers lean in at the same second. Sometimes, wine lets you sit quietly inside someone else’s heart, if only for an afternoon. Thank you, VinoInfluencers, for the secret.Thank you, Elena & Belén, for the day.
What The Nomination Actually Meant
Not All Milestones Come With a Trophy I am still holding that feeling…. I did not see it coming. Being nominated was unexpected—and rewarding on so many levels. Winning was never the point. The nomination itself felt like a recognition of the hard work and the long hours: of completely pivoting my career from project management into wine as a brand strategist and communicator, while raising a young family at home, and starting from scratch in a region that is not known for wine. Early mornings writing. Late nights editing. Tastings that become conversations. Glasses that open into someone else’s land, family, and work. A passion that has never felt like a career so much as a calling I keep answering. What I will not forget is the room. Communicators from 34 countries. Castilla y León opening its vineyards and tables. That hush when a bottle is poured and, for a moment, everyone leans in together. Instant friendships. No pretense. Just the warmth of a global community that already speaks the same language. Thank you to everyone who has followed my journey as The Happy Vine, sat at a tasting, shared a post, or believed that wine education can be warm, sensory, and human. We would not be here without the winemakers. They are the soul of the bottle. Every piece of content, every pairing, every “can you taste the limestone?” begins with them. The Happy Vine has never been about the spotlight. It has always been about the people who grow, ferment, and bottle something that carries place and memory. A nomination is a beautiful pause.The work continues — the next vineyard walk, the next glass, the next story that deserves to be told with care. Grateful. Grounded. Still completely in love with this world. Kathleen Smith, DipWSET