Had an enjoyable time this morning at the Henry Wine Group tasting event in La Jolla. It was nice to be able to speak with a number of winery owners or managers directly and I was not disappointed d by Vias Imports which was the main reason why I was so excited to attend.

Vias Imports specializes in Italian wine and they have quite the spread, pouring close to 50 wines at the event. They also had four featured winemakers there to answer questions about their individual wines. Aside from wishing I spoke Italian, I realized that because our wine clubs focus mainly on California, Washington and Oregon this was my first real opportunity to speak with internationally based winemakers since starting Uncorked Ventures.

I was struck how similar their approach was to many of the wineries that we already work with and was reminded how much I enjoyed my time in Italy and the people both during my travels there and Italians I’ve met here in the states.

Although it will take some time and more research to choose one of these wines for our Wine Exploration Club, the ground work certainly has been put in place already.

Perhaps the most interesting story of the day comes from Alto Adige, the absolute northern most part of Italy, practically on the Austrian border. It’s an interesting area in that the population speaks as much German as they do Italian and most of the towns sit at fairly significant altitude. The Abbazia Di Novacella winery was represented at the tasting and I immediately was drawn to their story. This winery is actually an Abbey and has been producing wines continuously on the site since 1142. At one point there were over 5,000 Abbey’s being operated across the world, today there are approximately 8 and this one has survived and continues to be financially independent solely because of the success of their winery operation. The Abbey itself has quite a few interesting collections, including a 20,000 volume library dating back to the 13th century and I believe the only private organization with two copies of the Gutenberg bible (only 180 originally produced). As you can tell, I love when I’m able to tell a story and this wine certainly has one of the best in the world.