Garda drives innovation with Crémant and lower alcohol wines

Northern Italy’s Garda DOC is best known as an ‘umbrella’ appellation, overlapping territories such as Lugana, Bardolino, Valpolicella, Soave and six others besides, offering up a medley of varieties and styles from the surrounding Veneto vineyards. Created in 1996, it offers greater flexibility to producers than the historic regional DOCs and, as such, it is on the march, pushing two new styles of wine that the Consorzio believes will be an asset to the collective region.

Insights: Beyond the duty easement

Drawn from our turn-of-year Looking Back, Forging Ahead series, we round up suppliers’ comments ahead of the end of duty easement on 1 February.

Headline Heroes: Rioja and a return to roots

Despite the still-popular image among consumers of Rioja as a ready-to-drink offer of easygoing charm, born of multi-regional blending and generous American oak, evolution in the region and its style is by no means a new-fangled thing. Finca Allende (the name means ‘further’) was arguably the most powerful precursor of the modern face of Rioja, bringing in single vineyard focus on terroir, coupled with the likes of new French oak and 100% Tempranillo in its top cuvée, as far back as the tail end of the last century. 

Low alcohol wine still losing out to mocktails and beer

We know that consumers are more health conscious than ever before, with sustainably sourced avocado on toast becoming the zeitgeist for a generation which is also increasingly moderating its alcohol consumption.

Looking ahead to the Xmas run up: Richard Cochrane, MD, Felix Solis UK