Last year when our "blog goddess" Lorena proposed to myself and my fellow wine supervisors that we start writing a blog for the ABC website, we accepted the challenge with some trepidation. Lorena assured us that with all our collective wine experience and travel, the blogs would flow like fine wine in a 4 star restaurant. I cannot speak for my colleagues, but writing a blog on a regular basis can sometimes be ... challenging. It's not the actual writing I find difficult but coming up with a  topic that I hope someone might enjoy reading is the tricky part.

But just when I was feeling like my well was running dry, one of our favorite Italian importers came  to the rescue. Last week Nadia Galati took contest winners Larry Baker, Brian Regan, Peter Shipley and myself to visit some of her Italian estates. (I was not part of this contest...I was the driver, but any excuse to visit Italy is a good one.)

Our travels included  Milan, Verona, Florence, Orvieto and Rome. Look forward to in depth reporting on a number of estates as well as a vintage report on Northern Italy from the source as soon as I recover from jet lag.

Arrivederci,

Paul Quaglini