Category: Italy

July is here and tomatoes are finally back in season. Whether cooked and tossed with pasta and parmesan, or sliced raw and served with mozzarella, olive oil, and crunchy salt, they’re a staple of summer chez nous. (Or, rather, a casa.)

The wine regions of France are enormous and diverse. The wide spectrum of vinification styles, climate patterns, and grape varietals provides a staggering range of wines. France offers enough diversity to keep us busy for years, and in some regions we feel as though we haven’t even scratched the surface.

Perched on a charming Tuscan hillside, the Fattoria Poggerino is certainly one of the most attractive domaines in our portfolio. Lucky for us, the wine is just as beautiful as its source -- Poggerino often appears in the international wine press as a source for classic, affordable Chianti. Their careful organic viticulture results in wines of unusual purity, and they…

We’re sometimes asked why our portfolio focuses so heavily on France. Our year there in the late 1990s has something to do with it, but in fact France’s wine regions offer a remarkable diversity of selection. In other words, there’s enough there to keep us busy for quite a while.

There’s hardly a food with a greater distance between in-season and off-season quality than the tomato. We’ve enjoyed a tomato-filled summer -- in salads, dressed simply with olive oil, or cooked down into sauce for fresh pasta or homemade pizza. When they’re sweet and crisp and soft, there’s nothing better.

Summer has arrived here in France. The poppies have splashed across fields of wheat, the flowering has completed nearly perfectly in the vines, and tomatoes have begun to appear in the local markets.