The Vine Inspiration Gets A Makeover

Having returned from a two week trip to Italy where lots of good wine was consumed, The Vine Inspiration is getting a bit of a makeover. The reason for the makeover is really that I’ve learned how to work the focus lens and other knobs and buttons on the camera, so from now on you can expect less of the blurry Instragram enhanced images and more of the fancy bottle shots that made a brief appearance during my trip to Tuscany in 2012 but debuted properly in my recent posts about Fino Inocente and PX’s attack on my incisors.

The focus of the blog over the past six months or so has been firmly on terroir driven Italian growers, Sherry and Champagne and here it will stay. These are the wines that interest me; wines that have energy, character and personality. Although there will still be tasting notes floating about, in my opinion these wines shouldn’t merely be reduced to a game of “name that flavour”; hopefully I’ll do them and their stories justice in my writings.

There will be a new post on the site every week so please check back often.

Before I dive into the first blog post from my recent Italian adventure, I leave you with some quick iPhone snaps from my trip that didn’t need any fancy camera equipment or Instagram to get their message across.

The bottle cellar at Montevertine – if you ever fall out of love with wine, a visit here will cure all.


A view of the sun drenched Conca d’Oro, Panzano.


Dear Chianti Classico consorzio, perhaps if ‘erecting’ future promotional installations, you might hire the guy from Catchphrase to ‘say what he sees’. I’m guessing you didn’t bank on so many teenage girls giggling around this in Greve.