A student in Hong Kong told me a celebrated Chablis tasted thin. Nothing was wrong with her palate. She was simply measuring the wine before she had understood it.

The first time I turned the pages of The Italian Dream, I had the reaction most foreigners have: I want to be in that book.
Through a long lunch in a garden and the houses of Italy's old families, it captures an art of living quietly preserved for generations.
It is a dream, of course, but one worth looking for, because it does exist.

Before it was a wine, Lugana was a marshy forest that travellers crossed with caution, a blank space between the lake and the plain.
Today it is home to a grape with its own name and white wines that, given time in bottle, can stand beside the finest anywhere.

Much of wine communication answers questions nobody has asked yet: information offered before interest exists. People find their way into wine through a moment, and knowledge follows when curiosity asks for it. Wine has no shortage of information. What it needs more of is invitation.

A glass of Secondo Marco Ripasso sits on a bridge between two wines.
It also crosses a much older one, back to a Verona that could not afford to waste anything.
Over dinner in San Zeno, a friend asked me to walk him across.

For years my tastings and classes have been held in other people's rooms. Atelier del Vino, in Verona, is the first that is my own, a place where I can welcome guests as I would at home. Its website, atelier.grandepassione.com, opens very soon.