Mikael has flagged D’Agata’s latest report on Barbaresco. As he noted, no one seems to have noticed that D’Agata has launched Terroir Sense, a dual-language English/Chinese website – another sign of the geographic direction in which the wine industry is moving.
D’Agata’s manifesto:
Founded in 2020, Terroir Sense is an independent terroir-driven wine and food review website with Chinese-English bilingual versions. As its name implies, the Terroir Sense is devoted to provide its readers with unbiased, credible, independent and expert reviews of the world’s best terroir-driven wines, tea and food.
Our goal is to give wine professionals and everyday wine lovers a tool by which to learn about wine in all of its many fascinating aspects: its history, grape varieties, territories, viticulture and winemaking realities. In short, of its terroir. As a devotee to all things Terroir, we’d like to help establish a culture of terroir amongst all those who love wine and food worldwide, a way of thinking that will hopefully expand and become a way of life.
I have been reading the Barbaresco section after Mikael posted it. Just now I saw the best buy Italian wines for 2020. He lists three (!) Freisa. I am intrigued!
I really respect Ian for his knowledge, wine writing and commentary and loved reading his articles on Vinous. However, I never found is actual reviews to be super helpful or aligned with my palate (it’s kinda random, sometimes they match, sometimes they’re really off). Great to see he has something new, though!
I’m interested, as I felt that Ian’s reports pushed open some new frontiers at Vinous. I also appreciate that he’s seemingly quite inquisitive and doesn’t mind real research (as evidenced by his Native Grapes of Italy book) but he tends to write with an enthusiast’s romantic enjoyment of wine. It’s a combination that works for me. Oddly enough, I don’t really think of employing a hit rate metric with his reviews because he has the ability to create curiosity and interest and that’s what I find in shortest supply among wine writers.
I have always enjoyed Ian’s writing. I am most intrigued by his coverage of tea. One of my close friends is Chinese and his wife is trained in tea and tea service. I have been to their home numerous times and experienced hours long tea sessions. It is fascinating. I am not surprised that he is exploring this area as tea has many parallels to wine, particularly terroir.
There used to be this really good Polish wine blog (written in English) way back when by a guy called Wojciech Bonkowski (a musicologist by training, if I remember correctly), he was doing both wine AND tea. Very insightful and exceptionally well-written and presented. Has anyone else ever come across it? Some really good stuff there.