English Wines, Fine Italian Wine and Argentinian Wine Merchant

On the Today Programme Radio 4 – Guy Woodward, Editor of Decanter magazine hit the news as his recent comments had offended supermarkets such as Asda when he said that you couldn’t get a decent bottle of wine for under a fiver. With current tax on wine at 56% and then allowing for bottling, transport, marketing and the rest – if you take the average spend at £ 4.50 a bottle here in the UK – that does not leave much for the nurturing of the grape.

The Planeta Wineries

The six wineries of Planeta are each unique, not only in terms of the wines they produce and the architecture, but in the soil profiles of the vineyards and the growing conditions.

Imagine the scene. You are a red wine producer who has been grafting away diligently for years to increase sales, get your marketing right, keep your prices down and cope with the fickleness of the weather which, whilst totally out with your control, can seriously jeopardise your annual harvest and your potential profit. Then all of a sudden the sun comes out – BIG TIME!

The history of winemaking in the United States is almost as interesting as the history of the country itself. While one hardly thinks of Cincinnati, Ohio as wine country today, it was the birthplace of the U.S. wine industry. It was there that Nicholas Longworth produced his famous Sparkling Catawba, leading to a wine industry that now ranks fourth in the world, just behind France, Italy and Spain.

South Africa may seem unsuitable for growing grapes, but it actually has a growing region that is similar to Chile and Australia, sharing roughly the same latitude. As such, it has a Mediterranean-style climate that is ideal for growing wonderful grapes.

There's one month to go till Christmas and we're beginning to get excited over here! Now of course you'll all be needing some drinks to help you keep merry throughout the holidays and The Sussex Wine Company is here to help!

Chile has been growing grapes for more than 500 years, but its renaissance today dates to the mid 1980s when modern production techniques arrived in the country, including steel fermentation techniques. The country has since risen to become the ninth largest wine producer in the world and Chilean wine now has quite the reputation.

The very word “wine” is synonymous with France and the legendary wine regions of France - Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Rhone and Alsace – are part of the legend and lore of the drunken grape.

France takes their wine very seriously. And while the French may come off as being a little arrogant about their wines at times, few can argue that their wines truly are magnifique!

India isn’t a well-known maker of wine in the Western world, but it has been making wine for centuries. It was Persian traders who introduced India to grapes somewhere around 4000 BC. However, it wasn’t until the arrival of the Aryans that the vineyards began to grow wine grapes instead of table grapes.

Few should be surprised that the people of Greece have been making wine for more than 6,500 years. The ancient Greeks already knew the nutritional value of wine back then and it was a natural and important part of daily life. It was even used in trade, expanding Greece’s influence throughout the region.

New Zealand wine is either unfairly overshadowed by its neighbor Australia, or lumped with it to create the Australasia market, which does nothing to further either country’s burgeoning wine industries.

For decades now, Spanish wines have been associated with the word inexpensive and were not always delicious. Outside of the wines from Rioja, many Spanish wines were uneven in quality and even when you found a good one, a second bottle of the same wine may not nearly be as good as the first. But...

Italian Wine has been grown in since the 2^nd Century B.C. In fact, the Romans pioneered large-scale wine production techniques in Italy, learning to use barrels and bottles to store and age wine. Almost 2,000 years later, Italy is still at the forefront of wine production, accounting for a fifth of all wine produced in the world. It even bested France as the leading producer in 2008. That’s a good thing, of course, since Italians drink more wine than anyone else, consuming 15 1/2 gallons per capita. In comparison, Americans only drink a little more than 2 gallons of wine per year.

Australian Wine production is relatively young, there’s an old sea chantey about being bound for “South Australia” and it could describe the wine industry for the last decade or so. Australian wine along with New Zealand wine has come out of seemingly nowhere to become one of the new darlings of emerging wine producers. Famous for its Shiraz, other Australian wines worth looking out for include Semillons, Rieslings,Chardonnays and sparkling wines.  

The fifth largest producer of wines in the world, Argentinan Wine making owes its roots to the Spanish who first brought wine grapes here in 1557. Argentine wine is as big and as bold as their national dance, the Tango. With intense red wines to soft fruity white wines, their wonderful flavors and spice will seduce you into a lifelong love affair with wines from Argentina.

We are delighted to see our Rustico Valdobbiadene Nino Franco, on the wine list at Jamie's Italian Restaurant Brighton....