#69 Farewell to 2025

Another whisky year under our belt

TL; DR: What another great whisky year! It started quietly but it ended on a treble! Our highlights were the north of Scotland trip (especially Wolfburn, 8 Doors, and North Point), the Independent Spirit, Fife and Dornoch Whisky festivals, a Brora tasting, and the final long weekend in the Wee Toon!

Here we are, ready for our last blog post of the year for you to enjoy before the New Year’s bells. With our Christmas celebrations almost over, and some fantastic meals behind us, it’s time to reflect a bit on this year, while listening to a very soothing early 2000s acoustic live from Pearl Jam. We hope you are cozy as we are, and that you could spend the holidays with your loved ones, and possibly a few good drams!

This year started slow for us, we didn’t visit any distillery between our 2024 trip to Australia and April 2025: just over 4 months without setting foot in a distillery! That was because of a combination of work and family commitments, we couldn’t even do our usual late-winter trip (Borderlands in 2022, Ardnamurchan & Mull in 2023, Skye and Raasay in 2024). However, we had lot of material from last year to ramble about on the blog, like our trip to Yorkshire and the one to Australia, both excellent adventures where we had great tastes of non-Scotch malt whiskies. In March, though, we managed to attend the Fife Whisky Festival in Cupar and the Independent Spirits Festival in Leith: these are two excellent festivals that should be on the radar of all whisky enthusiasts! A bit different from each other, the latter smaller and focused on independent bottlers, obviously, but very fun as well. Our plan is to attend them both again in 2026, we already secured tickets.

Volunteering at the Fife Whisky Festival.

In early April Roberto, one of Gianluigi’s best pals, came for a long weekend. The two went on a bromance trip in Campbeltown, followed by a hike on Arran. For Gianluigi, revisiting Springbank since 2021 was really a great and refreshing experience, with Findlay as a fantastic tour guide!

Dramming around with an old friend.

The first visit the two of us did together was not in a distillery, but in a winery: during one of our many trips to Italy we visited the Montalcino area, so we could indulge in visit to a historic winery: Fattoria dei Barbi. We thought the wine was excellent, even if an important disclaimer is that we know next to squat about wine.

Not our usual ‘landscape’. Still delicious.

It then came the time for the Spirit of Speyside, the week-long festival celebrating the many distilleries and producers of the region. As usual, we hit all the distilleries we hadn’t visited yet (Teresa also hit something else, but you’ll have to ask her, ahah), most of them closed to public (Inchgower, Glendullan, the first opening of the Cabrach). We also did two great tastings events, the Casks of Glen Moray and the Murray McDavid Drams under the stars. Overall, we always enjoy these events, and their variety. Our only complaint is the price for some distillery tours compared to the number/size of drams served. While the £100 tours at Diageo’s distilleries are bad enough, we just refused to pay £200 to visit two Chivas Brothers distilleries, one of which you can visit for around £25 in normal times. Thumbs down.

Drams under the stars…A pity it was so cold!

During the summer our highlight was a short trip to the northern Highlands we did with Edoardo, Gianluigi’s brother. We visited Pulteney, Wolfburn, 8 Doors and North Point: except the first one (which was fine but not outstanding), the other three visits were just incredible! Wolfburn drams were above our expectations, and we are looking forward to the single malts from the other two! Also, the landscape in this part of Scotland is just phenomenal!

A beautiful spot in the north of Scotland.

Spirit is maturing in a bunker at North Point distillery.

In July we also visited the Glasgow distillery for the first time, which just turned 10 and is one of the most exciting new producers in the game!

September was a bit of a disappointment, as we couldn’t make it to the Outer Hebrides for the Hebridean Whisky Festival. That was nobody’s fault, but with 3-4 consecutive days of high winds, it was just impossible for us to travel there. Despite the poor weather we still managed to sail to Tiree, home to a veeeeery tiny distillery.

Interesting equipment at Tiree distillery.

We made up for the missing trip by visiting another new small distillery in the Tain area, Toulvaddie, and by revisiting some old acquaintances, Glenturret and Glenkinchie, which both went through a remake since we’d visited the first time. The Glenkinchie tour was particularly great, also thanks to our pal and whisky geek John who works there as a tour guide!

When the guide is a whisky friend, priceless.

The last part of the year was very busy. First, we finally got inside our local distillery: Bonnington, a real workhorse in the heart of Leith! Then, we spent some time in the eastern Highlands: the team at Bacardi/Dewar’s decided to open two of their distilleries for charity, Royal Brackla and Macduff (and who are we to say “no” to visit a distillery for charity?), and we also managed to get into the recently reopened Glenglassaugh and Glencadam (dedicated posts to come next year).

Bonnington, neighbour distillery.

This year we ditched the Dramathon to attend the Dornoch Whisky Festival instead (they usually happen in two following weekends, too close to each other to attend both). This was a lot of fun, we’re definitely adding it to our (short) list of whisky festivals that we enjoy. An event was a memorable dinner where each course was paired with an Ardnamurchan dram, with Carl from the sales team introducing them. The lineup included their soon-to-be-released (now it is) 10-year-old, different from the previous version but more true to the distillery character.

Such a good dinner, such great drams.

Tasting-wise, the main highlight was a pricey but fantastic tasting at the Belfry: Brora and Clynelish, hosted by the great Jolly Toper Mark and Patrick Brossard, who wrote a book about Brora. It was our first time trying the old distillery malt, so it was very special as you can imagine.

A unique tasting experience for sure.

Another great event was the Aquavitae Blind Challenge in Glasgow, which we finally attended again after missing it in 2023 (flu) and 2024 (away): organised by Roy, it was a great opportunity to meet and chat with fellow barflies. The following week we attended the Kilchoman celebration for their 20years, at the Edinburgh Academy. We thought it would have been a tasting but was more akin to a small Kilchoman-only festival, with present and past bottlings to try – a nice surprise. Also, the Edinburgh Whisky Group was very well represented: a cracking time!

This year we didn’t do bad 🙂

Our whisky year finished off with a long weekend in Campbeltown: we didn’t tour any of the distilleries, but we had a few very interesting tastings (and again, next year there will be more about that).

Things you see in Campbeltown.

Obviously, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room: the state of the whisky industry, with respect to both production and hospitality. The great uncertainties around the economy on both sides of the Atlantic ocean make it hard to predict how the industry will be in 5, 10 or 15 years. We’re already seeing a big impact in the short term, with many distilleries pausing or reducing production. For example, as we are writing, we heard about Jim Beam pausing production at their Kentucky distillery (Mitch McConnell will be happy about that), which felt weird because it was our first full distillery tour back in 2016. On the other hand, some of the production expansion plans, in particular announced by some big players, now seem to be ludicrous and anachronistic: while we love whisky, it is still a “drug”, and you can only push it to some extent. We are also left wondering about the destiny of most of the new distilleries – often relatively small projects, we hope they’ll manage.

We heard the term “adjustment”, which makes a lot of sense at this stage. We hope one of the positive implications is that the dodgy investment schemes will gradually leave the market, avoiding the overinflation of casks and bottles prices. This “adjustment” might also make some producers rethink their plan to destroy historical distilleries to make space for theme parks (yes, we are talking about a distillery on Skye), and maybe rethink their tour prices. And finally, prices cooling down a bit (we already saw this being the case, especially with independent bottlers) might make them more realistic, allowing us to stash a few cracking malts for the year to come!

We hope you have some gems stashed as well, and that you’re sharing them with your loved ones to celebrate great moments in the year to come! Have a great 2026 and, as always, slàinte mhòr!

Slàinte!

#59 Another Tuscan detour

In the land of Brunello

TL; DR: While in Rome, do as the Romans do…while in Tuscany, go visit a winery. This time we went to Fattoria dei Barbi, in the land of Brunello di Montalcino. In this magnificent landscape, we learned about how Brunello is made during the visit of the historical cellar, and we tried some great wines.

One of the best things about our whisky journey is the renovated pleasure that now comes with eating or drinking in general. This is because of the continuous focus on aromas and flavours during whisky tastings, which slowly but constantly enhanced our senses of smell and taste. This didn’t happen in isolation though: during a 2018 trip in Thailand (no whisky stories there), we attended a cooking class which opened our minds in terms of spices use and flavour pairings. Over time, having a meal, a cup of coffee, or a pint, or even a walk in a meadow or in a wood have become much more pleasant experiences (and no worries, we don’t eat meadows…usually).

And here we come to wine: because of our Italian upbringing, many people assume we are good at the “wine thing” although, spoiler alert, we are definitely not. This is despite wine being homemade within our families, by Teresa’s grandfather and Gianluigi great-grandfather. Also, being brought up in Italy meant that wine was often on the table at dinner and during weekends. And, while we know the basics and we have our preferences (generally bold red wines that go well with meat, better if they spent some time in wood), we never went down this rabbit hole. Ironically, this started to come around (slowly) thanks to whisky: in 2021 we visited a winery in Tuscany because we learned that Glenallachie finished a whisky in casks from that winery: Grattamacco. As for fortified wines, we went to a few port houses in our 2022 holiday in Porto. We also indulged in some winery visits and tastings in Australia last year. Still not experts, but definitely more “flavour curious”.

So, what’s better than improving our wine knowledge by visiting a winery in Tuscany? The occasion came in April this year (2025), for Teresa’s mother birthday: together with her sisters, she organised a two-day trip to Val d’Orcia, one of those places that look like a classic Tuscany postcard (wait, it is a Tuscany postcard!) – smooth rolling hills, small medieval towns on top of them, vineyards and meadows (again, not eaten). We left Florence early, and by mid-morning we were in Pienza: a town famous for its pecorino cheese (one of many), and contrary to others, purposedly (re)built by Pope Pius II in 1462, to reflect the ideals of the Renaissance. We then visited the charming Bagno Vignoni (a village famous for a very old spa), before stopping for lunch nearby, where we (meaning Teresa and Gianluigi) shared a very tasty 1.2kg “Bistecca Fiorentina”.

A spa village – Bagno Vignoni, very charming.

Maybe not charming, but still delicious bistecca fiorentina.

In the afternoon, we drove towards Montalcino, the hometown of the renowned Brunello of Montalcino wine. Until a while ago we never heard of a Brunello cask finished whisky, but the independent bottler Ferg & Harris recently close this gap.

Back to wine, the winery we chose was Fattoria dei Barbi – the tour was quite cheap, only €10 for the winery visit, while for the tasting we could pick (beforehand) between a few options: we chose a basic tasting (€25, four wines from the basic range) and an upgraded one (€35, focused on Brunello). The winery is very pretty, hidden from the main road and surrounded by woodland and, obviously, vineyards.

Just about avoided photo-bombing at the start of the tour.

The tour started in the shop, from which we could access the historical cellar, a series of connected rooms full of big barrels for fermentation and maturation. Interestingly, these barrels had a ‘tappo colmatore’ on top, a Leonardo Da Vinci invention, a lid to verify the level of liquid in the barrel and to allow the release of gas that might generate during maturation.

A new discovery for us – the ‘tappo colmatore’.

While moving from one room to the next one, our guide covered the history of the Colombini’s family, owners of the estate for centuries. Originally a farm, wine making became prevalent in the 1800s thanks to Pio Colombini, one of the producers who started bottling Brunello instead of selling casks to grocers (‘vinai’). His son Giovanni expanded the business and made it one of the first to sell Brunello overseas. But what makes a wine a Brunello? The rules were set in the 1980s, but in a nutshell, it needs to be 100% ‘Sangiovese grosso’ grapes, and the wine needs to age at least 5 years, of which at least two in oak barrels (mostly French oak) and at least 4 months in the bottle (the remaining time is usually spent in big wooden vats, with the above mentioned ‘tappo colmatore’). Similarly, for the Brunello Riserva the years are six, with 6 months spent in bottle (the rest is similar).

No, these are not the hogsheads we’re used to.

We didn’t get too geeky on the tour, so we don’t have many technical details to share, but listening to family stories while admiring the old cellar was a great experience. The wine cellar was spectacular, with bottles of all vintages (including our birth years, sob). Some you could buy, but you needed to enquire, and they might decide not to sell anyway. However, the guide admitted that many of those might probably be well past their best, and now they are just collectible items.

So much history…

…and yes, we’re that old.

The tour came to an end, and we went to the next building, the bar and tasting room. The basic flight showcased a wide range of products: we started with a white wine, Vermentino dei Barbi (vintage 2023), then moved to a “table wine” called Brusco dei Barbi (2020, 90% Sangiovese and the remainder a variety of grapes). The third wine was their Rosso di Montalcino (2023, 100% Sangiovese grape but not a Brunello). The crescendo ended with their main product, the Brunello di Montalcino (2019, blue label), honestly another level compared to the previous three. The other flight was focused on Brunello, and it took where the previous one left off with the Brunello di Montalcino, followed by another Brunello, single vineyard, called Vigna dei Fiori (2020, white label) which was great, and finally with the Brunello Riserva (2019, red label), truly stunning. We loved the combination of oak and fruitiness in those last three wines.

This one was beautiful…

and this one, wow!

After the winery, we drove to Montalcino, the village, another beautiful “Tuscany-postcard” village, where we had a walk under a light rain and a gloomy sky, before a half pint in a local Circolo Arci (and from this, you can tell we’ve been living in Scotland for a long time) and the walk back to the flat booked for the night.

Beautiful sunset in Montalcino.

The next day, we spent some time at the Sant’Antimo Abbey, before driving to Siena for a stroll in this beautiful (albeit quite touristy) city, and lunch. From there, we went back to Florence.

Sant’Antimo Abbey behind the olive trees.

Classic picture of busy Siena.

And so, this is our latest “malternative” exploration, again in the esoteric world of wine. Overall, the visit was not as good as the one at Grattamacco of a few years back (maybe because this one was less intimate), but it was still very interesting and informative. The trio of Brunello’s was great though, something really worth to dig into for all the flavour-driven people.

We should say ‘salute’, but we keep our tradition instead, so, until next time, slainte!

Fattoria dei Barbi wine tour and tasting

Price: €10.00 pp (April 25) + €20.00/€35.00 for the tasting

Duration: 1hr (+ tasting at your own pace)

Tasting: the regular one, Vermentino, Brusco dei Barbi, Rosso di Montalcino, and Brunello di Montalcino; the advanced one, Brunello di Montalcino, Brunello di Montalcino Vigna del Fiore, and Brunello di Montalcino Riserva (vintage may change)

Target: everyone

Value for money: good

Highlights: the historical cellar

Recommended: we haven’t visited any other local wineries, but we had a good time

Link: https://www.fattoriadeibarbi.it/

#4 Tales from a Tuscan detour

Wine not?

For the first time we visited a winery in the Bolgheri area in Tuscany…with a Scottish connection!

Because of you know what, we haven’t visited our families for over a year, skipping the Italian Christmas for the very first time in 2020. Almost unforgivable!

This year, we made up by staying over a month between Piacenza (in the Emilia-Romagna region) and Florence. Both areas are famous (well, one more than the other…) for great food (of course, the lesser famous is the one with better food…Teresa might disagree with this statement) and delicious wine. This makes visiting our families even nicer. The only problem is the lack of whisky distilleries, with the next whisky trip planned weeks ahead. Nonetheless, we found a way to keep our palate trained with a different kind of experience.

In scotch whisky, red wine cask finishes are a relatively recent trend. Surfing the web, we realised that for more experienced whisky aficionados this might be still an unusual, and not always welcome, finish/maturation. Instead, for people like us that have been into whisk(e)y for a few years only, this feels pretty normal. Indeed, we were able to connect more easily with many red wine cask finished drams, such as the Arran Amarone cask, the Port Charlotte MRC, the Ledaig Sinclair Rioja finish or the Longrow Red(s). In our experience, French wine casks seem to be the most prevalent, but we are seeing more and more Italian wine casks.

Two drams that recently surprised us came from GlenAllachie: the first was a widely distributed 11y single malt, bottled at 48%; the second was again 11y, but cask strength and only available at the distillery (click here for more about that trip!). Both were finished in red wine casks from the Grattamacco winery, located on the hills in the Bolgheri area (Livorno Province), an officially recognized wine geographical denomination. In recent years (well, recent in “scotch time”) Bolgheri wine has become really popular, with over 60 wineries now active in the area. All of this just to say that one morning we woke up and said: “Why don’t we just try to check that out?” “Wine not?” (wink-wink).
So there we go! We booked a tour, took the car and drove! We left Florence quite early and after a quick stop for gas and to allow Gianluigi a second breakfast with a delicious pistachio custard croissant, we were on our way to discover a new place! The ride was almost two hours but quite smooth, in fact we arrived early. We thought about taking a walk, but after realising how frickin’ cold it was, we just rang the winery’s bell.

Taking pictures of the vineyard while freezing.

Michela, our guide, was already waiting for us. After our vaccination passes’ check, the visit started in the tasting room, which featured an amazing view on the hills and the Tirreno sea. Michela told us the story of the winery, which was founded in the late 70s by a guy from Lombardy, and sold in 2002 to the Colle Massari company. Compared to other wineries in the area, the estate is at a slightly higher altitude (around 2-300m on the sea level), therefore with a slightly different micro-climate.

The fermenting vats of the Grattamacco winery

After the introduction, we moved to the main production building. They harvest several grapes: Cabernet-Sauvignon (which is the main component of their red wines), Cabernet-Franc, Sangiovese, Merlot and Vermentino. Grapes are mechanically soft-pressed and cleaned to get the must, which is fermented in two types of vessel: metal big tanks or wooden 500 litres open vats (which smell great!). Then, we visited the cellar, where the casks are stored, divided by vintage. All casks are from the Taransaud tonnellerie (cooperage) and are of course made of French oak (Quercus robur)…the smell down there was amazing too! We could also take a look at what Michela called “the library”, where all the vintage bottles (starting from the early 80s) are stored. They use the casks up to four times, before selling them to other smaller wineries or to distilleries to make awesome whiskies (like the GlenAllachie). The vinaccia (leftover of the wine production) is sent to a distillery in Veneto region to produce Grattamacco grappa, and they also grow olives to produce olive oil.

And now, the wine tasting. First off, a white wine, made 100% with Vermentino grapes. We were both pleasantly surprised by how good it was (both not huge fans of white wines, but this one…WOW!). Second, the Bolgheri Rosso, made with four grape varieties (Cabernet-Sauvignon, Cabernet-Franc, Sangiovese and Merlot), fermented in the metal tanks, and aged 5-6 months. The third and fourth were the stars of the tasting: l’Alberello, single vineyard (less than 2 hectares, Cabernet-Sauvignon and Cabernet-Franc grapes) and aged for almost 18 months. Finally, the long awaited Grattamacco: fermented in oak vats, aged 18 months, mostly Cabernet-sauvignon (~65%) with an addition of Merlot and Sangiovese, with the percentages varying each year. These two wines were both sublime, and it was really hard to decide which one was the best! Anyway, thanks to this visit we sorted out a number of Christmas gifts.

Before going back to Florence, we had a nice lunch in a nearby restaurant (an “agriristoro”, actually), with delicious local food: wild-boar and beef roast. We slowly drove to the (quite small) Bolgheri village, where we took a walk, had a coffee and another glass of wine for the non-driver (Gianluigi): the mighty Sassicaia (mighty also for the price).

Definitely happy to try something different!

Overall, this was an amazing day and no less fun than the trips we usually do, the ones where we end up saying: “we should do this again asap!”! Being our first winery, we felt like total newbies again, but it was a great educational experience (btw, please correct us if we wrote anything wrong!). We have learned so much about this amazing nectar which has been on our families’ tables since we were kids. And the wine spoke for itself!

Grattamacco Winery Tour and Tasting

Price: 35.00 EUR pp (December 2021)

Tasting: 4 glasses of wine – Grattamacco Vermentino (white), Bolgheri Rosso (red), L’Alberello DOC single vineyard (red), Grattamacco Bolgheri (red)

Target: anyone

Value for money: looked good to us, but we can’t really tell as this was our very first winery tour

Highlights: the view from the tasting room, the tour in the cellar and the wines…pretty much everything!

Things we did not like: nothing

Link: https://www.collemassariwines.it/estates/grattamacco/