The Interview - Angela Hayward and Paul Raymonde, directors, AP Vino

Angela Hayward and Paul Raymonde met in 2002, and discovered that they shared a passion for Italian wines. The couple launched AP Vino in 2004 with input from Angela's stepfather, Fausto Pesci, who worked for many years as a restaurateur, Italian wine consultant, and major importer of Italian wine into Spain and Germany. Last month, AP Vino launched a consumer website, D'Vino, which is also home to The Wine Club of Italy, a scheme that offers mixed cases of wines complete with full tasting notes. AP Vino's portfolio lists 58 wines from 12 producers. Exclusive agencies include La Scolca in Gavi (selected wines), Il Carpino in Friuli, Tenuta di Riseccoli in Greve, and Pinino in Montalcino. A former property developer in Italy, Raymonde is also a well-known cartoonist, whose works have appeared in Punch and Private Eye, among other publications.

MMD in Piedmont

MMD has taken on the UK agency for Pio Cesare, a family-run producer of Piedmont wines.
Pio Cesare is managed by fourth generation, Pio Boffa, who commented: With our 52 hectares of vineyards in Barolo and Barbaresco, we embrace both traditional and more modern winemaking and also produce a range of single-vineyard wines from Barolo and Barbaresco.' A full range of Pio Cesare wines is now available from MMD, including Gavi, Dolcetto, Nebbiolo d'Alba, Barolo and Barbaresco.

Booting up

Italy was the only European country that enjoyed an increase in sales of wine to the UK in 2004 (AC Nielsen), so the mood should be upbeat as 44 leading Italian importers gather at Lord's Cricket Ground for the seventh Definitive Italian Tasting, instigated by the Italian Wines Committee of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association and organised by Hunt & Coady.

THE INTERVIEW - MICHELE ZORZI

Michele Zorzi, Matre D', Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Interview: Josie Butchart

THE ITALIAN FORUM

The Definitive Italian Wine Tasting has provided a long-overdue platform for commercially available, mid-priced Italian wines in the UK. Harpers casts an eye over the producers and wines helping to make this year's event the biggest and brightest yet

UPPING THE CHIANTI

In January and February, a series of seminars and tastings was held to promote Italian wines. Neil Beckett reports from Tuscany on the new-found power of the region's big three consorzi.

LIBERTY BECOMES SOLE AGENT FOR AVIGNONESI

CONSORZIO URGES PRICE CUT FOR 1998 BRUNELLOS

By Neil Beckett

SUPPORT FOR TOSCANA DOC WAVERS

By Jo Burzynska

Italy says no to GMO

By Jo Burzynska

Fling or real thing?

As one year slides not particularly memorably into another, Italians are looking back on an age, now clearly on the wane, when the so-called vitigni migliorativi' (improving vine varieties) were something no self-respecting wine could be seen without in polite society.

Liberty demands change over screwcap attitudes

Dear Minister,
I am writing to you regarding an issue that is having an adverse effect on the sales and positive image of Italian wine.

The Analyst

It can't be easy living up to the Chef of the [20th] Century' accolade applied to Jol Robuchon by Gault Millau.

The Analyst - by Neil Beckett

The Bell at Skenfrith (www.thebellatskenfrith.co.uk) has long been known to aficionados, but has only recently started to win the wider recognition it richly deserves, earlier this month beating one of London's best hotel restaurants to win the 2006 Gosset Award for the best Champagne list in the UK.

Wines in the Weekly Press

Moore extols the virtues of English wines; Rose recommends Roussillon; and Atkin, the wine trade's poet laureate, waxes lyrical on Elizabeth Bennett Browning. Meanwhile MacQuitty says Old and New World wines are just different'.
Christian Davis reviews the reviews

Remember Super-Tuscans?

It was only yesterday, it seems, that Super-Tuscans were flying high, write Nicolas Belfrage MW and Franco Ziliani. They were the rebel wines, the ones that broke the rules and whirled Tuscany into the vinous stratosphere of the planet, notching up pundit points higher than all but the best Burgundies and commanding prices that would not have made a second-growth claret producer blush. They were the breath of fresh air in the musty dankness of Tuscan tradition.

Crisis control

As the crisis' in Italian wine sales deepens, the number of ideas about what should be done continues to grow.