I’m not one for resolutions. Resolutions are susceptible of breaking at the first opportunity and then because they’ve been broken once, they subsequently lose all their power. I prefer to think about a mission, a channelling of motivation, but even then, sometimes January is not the right month for finding inspiration and motivation.

There is a pile of books on my bedside table, with a bookmark in each of them as a testimony to my good intentions but lack of perseverance. So, I’ve been using the downtime between Christmas and New Year to catch up on some of this reading. One of the books I’ve just dusted off again is Jamie Goode‘s “The Goode Guide to Wine – A Manifesto of Sorts”. It’s an easy read, which often puts onto paper thoughts that I have been harbouring myself, without ever having expressed in such black and white terms.

This is one of these such passages and it was after reading it this afternoon that my mission for this blog in 2023 finally crystallised.

“As wine drinkers, we are lucky to be living in times like these. We are not, of course, lucky that lots of very famous excellent wines have leapt in price over the last decade, taking them out of reach of the likes of me and many of my friends. But we are lucky because never before have so many interesting wines been made. Go to pretty much any wine region and hunt around, and you will find keen, talented winegrowers prospecting for special vineyard sites and then trying to make wines that express these privileged patches of ground.

This occurs in the new world, where pioneers have established great terroirs but also in the old world, where a new generation of growers is emerging, shedding the complacency of their forebears, respecting the life within their soils, and making superb wines. For these brave souls, wine is a vocation rather than a job.”

Jamie later cites Swartland and Stellenbosch in South Africa and Loire and Beaujolais in France. My mission for 2023 is to use this blog as a platform to shine a light on what’s happening in the less trendy, but just as deserving stretch of northern Italy where I’m setting down roots. From Piedmont to Friuli passing by Lombardy and the Veneto (but not exclusively limiting myself to these regions) there are new winemakers making terroir-driven, minimal intervention wines, at very reasonable prices.

Some of these winemakers I’ve already mentioned – e.g. Sieman (Veneto), Thomas Niedermayr (Alto Adige), Uros Klabjan (Istria, Slovenia) and Olek Bondonio (Piedmont) – but there are many more who are languishing in my Drafts folder and require dusting off and a quick lick of polish… much like those books next to my bed.

Exactly how Joe Dassin describes the Champs Elysees in 1969, in this small strip of the globe, il y a tout ce que vous voulez: big reds, bubbles, macerated whites, volcanic soils, maritime influences, mountain wines. I’m going to turn a blind eye to the commercial wines that are omnipresent and focus on the interesting wines that are affordable for anyone with a passing interest. I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

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