Food tips

Lugana is  a small Italian wine region that you’ve probably never heard of before.   It straddles Veneto and Lombardy, right around the Southern shore of the the stunning Lake Garda. It's neighbors are Soave and Valpolicella and there are just a little over 100 producers. Lugana wines are  made from an indigenous varietal called Trebbiano di Lugana or most accurately Turbiana which is related to Verdicchio.  The clay soil adds a touch of salinity and savory quality and t he wines are zesty and bright with lemon, grapefruit and tangerine and sometimes sweeter notes of peach, almond and even mint. I visited Lake Garda and Lugana in the Fall of 2015 and  Cantina Castelnuovo  winery. I was struck by how much more delicious and compelling the wines were than the more common and often insipid Pinot Grigio.  The most challenging thing about Lugana white wines  is finding them in the US.  The un-oaked Lugana DOC wines are fun and fresh and rep...

Although it’s a French grape varietal, Malbec really flourishes in Argentina  where it was first introduced in 1868 . But for a long time only the Argentinians got to enjoy it. For the last 50 years or so it was a big wine and a bit on the brash side, but that’s changing. Malbec today can be much more elegant, lower in alcohol and more complex. It's grown pretty much in every wine growing area of  Argentina and varies in style from one wine region to another. Mendoza is the region you're most likely to see. It's a high plateau, under the Andres on the western edge of the country and it's where 70% of Argentina's wine is grown.  I'm a fan of Argentinian Malbec, perhaps because it has a lot in common with another favorite wine of mine, Merlot. But it was only about 10 years ago that I discovered it, which isn't all that surprising because it wasn’t until the 1980’s and 1990’s that Argentina began focusing on creating wines for export. The wines began to take o...