Elevate your wine game

Piemonte: abutting the Swiss border, the sub-alpine Piemonte is responsible for Italy’s most transparent, complex and beguiling wines, be it Barbaresco, Barolo or Nebbiolo from the cooler Alto Piemonte, a tumble of limestone, sand and ancient turrets.

The most northern of the world’s great wine regions is at a fulcrum as mainstream houses parry the influence of smaller growers and their drier, more tensile expressions. The result is arguably the most exciting of all the great regions. manifest as a bona fide cold climate, the geological dominance of chalk and vinous wines marked by site, rather than froth marked by variable degrees of sweetness as in the past.

A marginal climate born of the Roaring Forties and the Arctic drift, as the expanse of the Tasman meets dark volcanic soils, giant earth worms and close planted vineyards of Australia’s finest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Italy’s answer to Provence’s lifestyle meme, Tuscany is the land of Visconti and Sting, but more notably the world’s second most widely recognised wine in Chianti (the first, in case you are wondering, is Bordeaux), as well as richer idioms of Sangiovese in Brunello and its brighter sibling, Rosso di Montalcino.