Paul Caputo

To close down a busy few days of tasting with the VDP (an association of over 200 growers from all over Germany), Paul Caputo stopped in at Heimat in Frankfurt to raid one of the best German wine lists in the city. The mood called for bone-dry Riesling of Grand Cru quality, with plenty of miles on the clock.

Each week Paul Caputo picks out three bottles from his cellar, a collection built up over the last 20 years in the wine trade. This first entry features a 2018 Susumaniello rosato from Salento, a 2016 Soave and 2013 Nosiola from the foothills of the Dolomites.

Timorasso represents one of the great comebacks of the Italian wine scene. All but lost to the archives of history it was rescued by winemaker Walter Massa and not only kept in circulation harvest after harvest, but elevated to the podium as one of the country’s great white wines. His success inspired such a revival that growers are now restructuring their appellation for a bright new future. Paul Caputo charts the changes.

Paul Caputo has been travelling around the south of Italy for the last 15 years, tasting wines, meeting producers and tracking its impressive development. During this period many estates experienced a generational transition that brought in new ideas and balanced them with local traditions. Scientific and technological improvements have helped renew respect for the region’s forgotten production areas while a growing understanding and appreciation of southern grape varieties has amplified these positive changes. Campania has made immense progress over the last two decades and in recognition, Paul has compiled a list of his 50 most exciting wines to track down and experience.

Don’t let the romantic archaeological sites, coastal lakes, beaches, thermal springs, and nature reserves fool you. This is one of the most dangerous places on earth make to wine. Paul Caputo tastes through some of the Campi Flegrei’s best white wines and discovers an appellation growing in confidence, producing wines with charm and personality that are impossible to replace elsewhere. We’re embarking on a golden age for Falanghina Flegrea.

Paul Caputo travelled to Montefalco in May 2022 for an in-depth look at the latest 2018 Sagrantino release. He discovered that the appellation’s key names continue to produce excellent wines and set the benchmark for what is ultimately a very challenging variety to work with.

Paul Caputo looks at the growing interest around single vineyard Prosecco and contemplates the significance of heroic viticulture. How important is terroir in the Conegliano-Valdobbiadene DOCG appellation and can we taste it in the glass?

Poggio Argentiera is an exciting estate located in Tuscany’s coastal Maremma region and the source of high-quality wines from the local Sangiovese, Ciliegiolo and Vermentino varieties, but also international favorites such as Syrah and Cabernet Franc.

Falanghina is one of Southern Italy’s key white grape varieties, but has long been considered a poor relation to the likes of Greco di Tufo and Fiano di Avellino. Perhaps some of this sentiment comes from a lack of association with a famous terroir and the stereotype that it is a simple wine to drink young. Paul Caputo looks at the Fontanavecchia estate’s age worthy wines and their ability to improve over time.

When Miguel Mateu purchased the Castle of Perelada in 1923, a vast renovation was needed. His dream was to modernise one of Catalonia’s great historical wineries into something fit for the future. Yet such an aspiration is timeless. The need to strike a balance between utility and statements of tradition, between context and innovation, has continuously loomed over every architectural project, and the wine business is no different. What has changed however, is our considerations of how things work, and what things mean; in short perhaps, fashion.

Aglianico del Vulture must be considered one of the great terroirs of Italy. Its ruggedly beautiful terrain tumbles from the foothills of Monte Vulture, an ancient and extinct volcano situated in the thick of the Mezzogiorno. At dusk, its talon shaped crater crafts an eerie silhouette against the crimson sky and the little lights of the Vulture’s (vul-tur-aay) hilltop villages flicker beneath the stars. This is a wine that looms large in the hearts and minds of its admirers, for to truly understand the Aglianico grown in these ancient soils, is to understand Basilicata and its culture of struggle.

Paul Caputo considers how the runaway popularity of rosé has provided a fantastic opportunity to highlight the amazing culture of rosé drinking in Puglia and in particular Salento.

Pantelleria is one of the most interesting terroirs in Italy. Known as the black pearl of the Mediterranean, this secluded Sicilian island is entirely volcanic, formed through a series of eruptions that have gradually composed its contoured slopes of basalt and shiny obsidian. Over time, man has left his mark too, sculpting walled terraces in order to cultivate grapes, capers and olives, and such endeavours have helped develop its famous vistas of simple, agricultural life.

There are few serious wine collectors clamouring to stockpile Gavi. Why would they? The Cortese grape is known for its simple, drink-early freshness, not for its ability to mature and certainly not for its capacity to deliver complex wines that merit being hidden away in the cellar for years. Ask around the wine world and you’d be hard pressed to find someone prepared to put Gavi in their list of age worthy whites. Sure, they’ll enjoy a glass or two as an aperitif, but momentous wine it is not.

Tomasi di Lampedusa’s colourful and evocative portrayal of the creeping, sleepy decline of the Sicilian aristocracy offers a romantic backdrop from which to consider one of the island’s more sluggish DOCs…

In modern wine making terms Macedonia is still a very young country. It only gained independence as recently as 1991, and with little history of quality focused producers before this, there is no legacy of fine wines for us to turn our attention to when seeking to understand today’s wines.

Something has happened to Soave in the last decade. It seems to have gone from being one of the most uninspiring names in wine to one of the most spectacularly under valued whites around. The secret, it seems, lies in a new generation of winemakers that focus on freshness, balance and the relentless pursuit of expressing the mineral rich hillsides of the appellation’s historic ‘classico’ zone.

Just before the clouds burst, the brooding grey sky hung low over a vertical wall of jagged basalt, the key geological feature of San Giovanni Ilarione, a rustic agricultural village nestled in the heart of Italy’s trendiest sparkling wine appellation - Lessini Durello DOC.