Latest news with #Tuscany
Daily Mail
39 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Our wine expert reveals the best Italian wines to sip this summer, from £8
This week I'm spotlighting wines that capture the charm of Italy as summer hits full flow. We'll begin in the ever-exciting region of Soave, with a crisp white: a gorgeous substitute for Chablis (which you can never get for under £10). Next up: a modern red made from the distinctive Refosco grape, full of vibrancy. Finally a trip to Tuscany and Umbria for a classic Chianti and an expressive rosé that breaks the mould. m.
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
Roasting-tin panzanella
This is one of my go-to easy summer favourites. Everything is cooked in just two roasting tins and is on the table in half an hour, yet it's a dish that looks impressive and livens up any meal. A panzanella is a Tuscan tomato salad traditionally made with stale bread, but I've given it an indulgent twist and used Tesco Finest sourdough for its tangy taste and airy texture. I like this warm version where the tomatoes are roasted until juicy and the bread is crisped in the oven before everything is mixed together and finished with Tesco Finest buffalo mozzarella from the Campania region, bringing a creamy texture and fresh flavour to the dish. This recipe makes the most of the tomatoes, which are at their best at this time of year. I've used a mix from the Tesco Finest range for a sweet and full-bodied flavour. Prep 10 min Cook 20 min Serves 4 500g Tesco Finest mixed baby tomatoes 270g Tesco Finest mini San Marzano tomatoes 5 tbsp Tesco Finest Sicilian extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced250g Tesco Finest white sourdough loaf, roughly torn into chunky pieces1 tbsp red wine vinegar 210g Tesco Finest Kalamata olives, pittedBig handful fresh basil, torn, plus extra to serve2 balls Tesco Finest buffalo mozzarella, torn Wine pairingTesco Finest Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6. Halve any larger tomatoes and keep the smaller ones whole. Toss in a large roasting tin with 3 tbsp of the olive oil, the garlic and a good scrunch of sea salt. Roast for 20 minutes. Toss the chunks of sourdough in the remaining olive oil, spread out on a flat baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Add the vinegar, olives, basil and half the bread to the baking tin with the roasted tomatoes to soak up all the juices. Scrape into a serving dish and add the rest of the sourdough and mozzarella. Finish with extra basil and a drizzle of olive oil. Shop the ingredients for this recipe on and discover how Tesco Finest can make your everyday taste better
Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Francesca Amfitheatrof's golden summer
It has been only a matter of weeks since Francesca Amfitheatrof parted ways with Louis Vuitton by mutual agreement, after seven years as artistic director of jewellery and watches. But when we speak over Zoom she could not appear to be more relaxed. Perhaps it's where she is based — Il Pellicano in Tuscany for a celebration of the hotel's 60th anniversary. She's joined on the call by the CEO and creative director of the Pellicano Hotel Group, Marie-Louise Sciò, to discuss their jewellery collaboration marking 'the Pelli's' six decades. 'I'm very happy,' says Amfitheatrof, 'it's perfect timing in life.' The women were both brought up in Rome (Amfitheatrof is half Italian) and their mothers, they discovered recently, are also friends. Amfitheatrof is a loyal guest of Il Pellicano hotels; Sciò is effusive in her praise of the jeweller. 'I love what she does, it's fantastic to have something designed by her.' The idea to collaborate started over a swim on Ischia last July. 'It just happened really naturally,' she says. Their completed creation is a medallion pendant crafted in silver or gold; a gnarly, textured take on the ancient Roman mask Bocca della Verità, or Mouth of Truth, which can be found outside the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Once the design was agreed, Amfitheatrof took the idea to one of the factories she knows from her time at Louis Vuitton and Tiffany. 'I know all the factories and makers in Italy. I walked into one and it was all HardWear, the collection I did for Tiffany — the whole factory! I have very good relationships with them so they agreed to make it and we made a wax model.' From this the medallion was cast. Sciò describes the pendant as having 'a timeless quality and also a 1970s and 1980s vibe' — something that reminds her of her childhood and summers spent at Il Pellicano. Her father, Roberto Sciò, bought the property in 1979. 'I used to hide behind the bushes because I wasn't supposed to be downstairs — it wasn't kid friendly. All the women guests wore jewellery to go the beach. They had medallions and rings and earrings; they were covered in gold.' Amfitheatrof was inspired by the past when creating it: 'I had this fabulous aunt, she was Californian and she arrived in Rome and always had medallions that would jingle-jangle. I immediately thought of her when we were discussing it. The surface of the gold is unpolished — it needs that patina so it feels like it's been in your jewellery box and on your body for a long time. Nothing is highly polished, nothing is super shiny.' 'Like the Pelli,' Sciò interjects, 'it doesn't scream and yell.' Amfitheatrof: 'Exactly. The hotel exudes an elegance that isn't obvious; there's this incredible ease — you know, when things are settled? It breathes that.' Amfitheatrof hopes to see men and women wearing the medallion 'super glamorous, down by the pool, martini in your hand'. It's certainly an enticing image. Launching on June 26, €1,700 in 925 silver, €5,000 in 18ct gold;
New Statesman
3 days ago
- Science
- New Statesman
'Minerality' is a wine industry myth
Fifty-one years ago, I bought a bottle of Chianti. I was a nursing assistant, living in nurses' accommodation. Wages went on food, drink and books; I taught myself to cook. When the communal pans were laid aside, I opened the straw-swaddled bottle, poured the pale red wine and marvelled: every drop was sucked from Tuscan soils. It seemed incredible: we were sitting here, drinking Tuscany. Literally. Near Norwich. Gulp! This astonishment expanded. Wine (I read) possessed a thing called terroir. That meant that its sensory character was predicated on the physical milieu in which its vines grew. Those who wrote about terroir usually used it as a synonym for soil and bedrock. Wine culture has gone global in the past half-century. A critical industry now feasts on wine, like an algal bloom on a great lake. Wine websites encourage you to purchase hundreds of thousands of tasting notes – for wines you can't find, can't afford, haven't got room for and will never drink. Read them to lust and crave, and the word 'minerality' will cascade about you. According to the master of wine Justin Martindale, whose research paper examined the use of the term in more than 20,000 tasting notes written between 1976 and 2019, it was the most widely used descriptor for white wines (appearing in 19.2 per cent of the notes surveyed) and the sixth most used descriptor associated with reds. Is wine mineral soup? The emeritus Earth sciences professor Alex Maltman of Aberystwyth University has been challenging this idea for a decade (most recently in Taste the Limestone, Smell the Slate, published by Academie du Vin Library). Vines, he points out, 'are made not from the soil but from oxygen, hydrogen and carbon derived from water and the air, everything being driven by sunlight'. These light-and-air plants can do nothing at all with rock minerals, which in any case have no aroma or flavour. Vines do metabolise nutrient minerals, mostly from humus – the organic component of soil – but they don't pass directly into grape juice. Fermentation, moreover, is a transformative process: some elements are removed during it; others are added. Far from being 'mineral-laden', Maltman says, 'the actual nutrient mineral concentrations in wine are minuscule'. If you want to drink minerals, buy French Vichy Célestins or Spanish Vichy Catalan, whose dissolved bicarbonate, sodium, chloride, potassium and sulphide are the result of long residence times in subterranean aquifers. So why the constant assertions of 'minerality'? Most tasting notes are a wild metaphorical fling. Wine doesn't contain blackcurrants, cherries and vanilla, though its complex chemistry may include substances that might suggest these ingredients. Anyone who farms, gardens or hikes will know that stones and earth have an aromatic personality, especially when worked or rained on – though Maltman points out that what our noses are reacting to is organic matter on those stones or in that earth, not minerals. 'Minerality' might be a metaphor for this embrace. It might also be a way of describing those flavours in wine that don't evoke fruit itself, or the processes wine undergoes (a creaminess from lees contact, for example, or vanillin from oak). Levels of salt (sodium chloride or halite) vary in wine and are likely to come from external sources (island winds, or repeatedly irrigated land). 'Minerality' is often linked to a wine's acid profile, especially when this seems (another metaphor) to have a crystalline edge. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Most of the time, though, it's just cap-doffing and knee-bending: something writers say about wines they want to admire. I wasn't, in fact, drinking Tuscany; I was drinking something that had happened in Tuscany. Terroir isn't soil or rock, but place – and what happens there. [See also: How to do it like a movie star] Related
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Italy acted properly in November Monte Paschi stake placement, minister says
ROME, June 25 (Reuters) - Italy acted properly in placing a 15% stake in state-backed bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena ( opens new tab last November, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said, after prosecutors in Milan started an investigation into the transaction. Giorgetti said he had reiterated "the absolute correctness of the work of the men and women who worked on the placement at the ministry" to a parliamentary committee on security he was addressing when asked about the probe. Italy's economy ministry sold the stake via an accelerated bookbuilding (ABB) procedure handled by Banca Akros, the investment banking unit of Banco BPM ( opens new tab. Banca Akros said multiple times it had acted "properly and transparently" in handling the sale, after the Financial Times reported that UniCredit ( opens new tab had been unable to buy a 10% stake in MPS during the placement. The Treasury cut its stake in MPS to 11.7% from an original 64% through three share placements in around a year. The November sale was aimed at building a stable core of domestic shareholders in MPS, which Italy rescued in 2017 and had been returning to private hands. Banco BPM ( opens new tab took a 5% stake in the Tuscan bank, while fund manager Anima Holding ( opens new tab took 3% and construction tycoon Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone and the holding company of the late Ray-Ban owner Leonardo Del Vecchio took 3.5% each. "The sale was carried out under the same terms as the ones previously made," Giorgetti told reporters. The minister also said the European Commission had asked Italy for details of the placement. "We are absolutely relaxed," he added. The stake placement kicked off a long expected wave of M&A activity in Italy's banking sector that has caused upheaval.
