Craig Camp

VIENNA. Wine growers fear that up to 70 per cent of this year's wine harvest has been destroyed after Tuesday's hail storms.

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I could not agree more.

Agriturismo Oasi degli Angeli: Via S.Egidio, Tel. 073 577 8569 FAX 83989 E-mail: marco.c@siscom.it Their English is not great, but passable if you go slow. I will try to give you a list of places in November. I took my teenagers (then 19 and 16) to Rimini in August for the discos (I went to bed) and then into the Marche for caves and such. As you going to Venezia I would recommend working your way right up the coast from the south - Puglia, Abruzzo, Marche, Romagna (Ravanna!) and then Venezia. Send me a PM on where you will arrive and how much time you have.

Which Terrabianca wine is your favorito? Campaccio?

I know this wine is available in NYC, LA and Chicago. Where are you located? It is imported by Vineyard Expressions in New York and Great Lakes in Chicago. It is absolutely worth a detour to visit. There is also an excellent, and I mean REALLY good, osteria in Grottammare - just 15 minutes away - called Osteria dell'Arancio. Marche, like Abruzzo, is a very beautiful place. In a 40 kilometer wide strip you have the Adriatic beaches, hills like Tuscany and mountains almost like the Alps. Both regions are home to some of the most interesting young chefs and wine makers and tourism is refreshingly light.

The IGT only continues to confuse. Super Tuscans are Toscano IGT. The name Super Tuscan does not exist in any controlled context. Click here for my IGT TDG article. Are you looking for good values in modern (read barrique) styled sangiovese? What price range? The best value in a Super Tuscan styled wine may come from Emilia Romagna - Fattoria Zerbina Marzieno (belend with cabernet) and Pietramora (100% sangiovese).

Let me get this straight. You will come over for dinner and bring the wine, wine for later, the food and even the glasses? Isn't that called catering?

Hidalgo La Gitana is a gorgeous wine and they are obsessed about keeping fresh product in the market by not over-selling distributors. They deserve all the credit in the world both for an extraordinary product and for their dedication to quality in all aspects. Their date coding system is an example of their high standards. Visit the Hidalgo website here. Smaller bottles like 500's and 375's should be standard for Fino/Manzanilla. They only bother with 750's because the USA market insists on them. Is this also the case in the UK? I am sure the very fresh wines of La Gitana are fine after a week, but I would be concerned about larger brands where the product is older to begin with. When making recommendations for other people's money I like to stay conservative and still look at 3 to 4 days as optimum.

What can I say - we hard core wine geeks are hard to deal with. We force you to drink all that old stuff in our cellars.

When I cook I have VERY specific and a well thought out plan for the wines I wish to serve and why I want to serve them with this or that particular dish. Often this entails opening and/or decanting wines hours in advance. I really do not welcome intrusion into this plan and will save the gift bottles for later - often making a point to serve them the next time the person that gave that bottle is a guest. A larger cookout or informal buffet is another matter. The more casual the event, the more I welcome guests bringing bottles and creating a kind of impromptu tasting. In this situation I feel obligated to open all the bottles. Of course having lots of half-full bottles hanging around our house is normal - much to the pleasure of my wife.

All rules are off if the host is a 'home wine maker'.

What if the host thanks you for the wine, then promptly removes it to a cabinet where it sits for the rest of the night? Meanwhile, you're offered a glass of uninteresting jug wine.

Sellers of beer, wine, and other alcohol products in the state of Delaware will soon be allowed to open their doors on Sundays between the hours of noon and 8 p.m.

Secrets of Wine Spectator Magazine Revealed in Unauthorized Guide Ever wonder if the Wine Spectator was on the up and up. Did some of those ratings seems a bit funny? Wine Angels is a consulting group that has just released and interesting look at the Wine Spectator. Have fun!

Lets try to simplify a rather complex topic - Sherry. Basically there are three types of Sherry all of them aged in barrels about 2/3 full and loosely bunged: 1. Fino - a 'biological' wine as they call it as it is covered by 'Flor' a yeast that creates a thick white coat over the wine which protects the wine from oxidation and also interacts with the flavor of the wine. This Flor can be quite thick and the thicker it is the more delicate and less oxidized is the wine. These wines include - Fino, Manzanilla (Fino from Sanlúcar de Barrameda) and Amontillado. Manzanilla is more delicate than Jerez Fino because the climate in Sanlúcar de Barrameda favors the growth of a thicker covering of Flor. Amontillado is an old Fino or Manzanilla that goes through an oxidative process by extending aging after the 'Flor' dies. Fino and Manzanilla should be about 15% alcohol while Amontillado will be about 18%. Do not buy a Fino style with a alcohol content over 15.5% - they are terrible. The best wines are produced from the Palomino vine. 2. Oloroso - an 'oxidative' wine as no 'Flor' forms and the wine is exposed to oxygen. These wines include Oloroso. Oloroso is dark brown, bone dry, powerful and incredibly complex. True 'mediation wines'. The best are produced from the Palomino vine. 3. The super sweet wines - Pedro Ximénez is bottled on its own, but its main function to be added to the dry Oloroso to create Cream Sherry. It is an oxidative wine like Oloroso, but it is SUPER sweet, almost like syrup. In fact it makes a good ice cream topping. The already sweet grapes are dried to make them even sweeter. The other super sweet Sherry is Moscatel which is bottled on its own. It is also in the syrup category. Just to confuse there is a style inbetween Amontillado and Oloroso called Palo Cortado. All the styles of Sherry are produced by the Solera system which is simply a fractional blending system that blends wines of various vintages to produce a consistent style in a continuous process. Finos go through the Solera process in about 6 years while great Oloroso soleras may be 50 or more years old. For a good explanation of the Solera process Click Here and then click the All About Sherry Link OK but what does that have to do with how well Sherry keeps once open. What it means is that the Fino wines will be damaged by oxygen and need to be consumed as young and as fresh as possible. While the Amontillado, Oloroso and sweet wines that are already exposed to oxygen are 'pre-oxidized' so to say and will keep well in open bottles for a more extended period. In my opinion Fino and Manzanilla should be consumed within 3 days of opening and should be no more than a year old. Amontillado should be consumed within 10 days of opening, Oloroso and Cream within a month and the super-sweets within two months.

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There is also no $14.80 bubbly equal to good $25 Champagne and not many $24.80 bottles of sparking wines that offer the complexity in a good bottle of Champagne.

They sound like they were in prefect condition. Do you know how they were stored?

I have never had a 'sparking wine' from anywhere that challenged Champagne for quality that also did not not charge Champagne prices. There are a lot of nice wines with bubbles, but few with the complexity of Champagne. That being said there is a lot of crap coming out of Champagne these days.

Fizz has gone from champagne market

Are we being watched There is nothing wrong with these wines except the price. Tignanello is not on the level of Solaia or Sassicaia. They are all certainly expensive. Overrated is another question. The 1998 Sassicaia was amazing, but the wine varies a bit much in quality from vintage to vintage for such a high price. They are all capable of excellence. They also are very different wines with Tignanello and Solaia being from Chianti Classico and Solaia from the warmer Maremma. Also you ask for Sangiovese based wines but Tignanello is the only one of the three defined by Sangiovese (80%) with the others primarily based on Bordeaux varietals - Sassicaia has no sangiovese in the blend. For some other wines with a real sangiovese character here is a short list of wines I personally like to drink: Monsanto Il Poggio Chianti Classico Riserva Riecine Chianti Classico Riserva and La Gioia (could be the best values in Toscana) Costanti Rosso di Montalcino an and Brunello Montevertine - Le Pergole Torte and Il Sodaccio (some of the finest sangiovese produced) Fattoria Zerbina - Marzieno and Pietramora (Emilia Romagna)

These are both in Siena. We love the Palazzo Ravizza - it is only a 3 star, but is gorgeous. Ask for a room with a view of the lovely garden - those rooms also have a wonderful view over the whole countryside. They even have parking. Certosa di Maggiano is gorgeous, but expensive.