Malta’s vineyards are spattered with brightly-coloured dots in new shades of yellow and red hues peeping through leafy vine canopies ready to have their ripe crop picked. The vivid transformation from small green berries to fully-coloured grapes known as veraison (and pronounced ‘VEH-ray-zoh’) has come to an end. Adopted into English use, veraison is originally a French viticultural term meaning ‘the onset of grape ripening’ … Read More
Malta
Grasping Girgentina
Just say ‘Girgentina’. The soft sibilance, the internal alliteration, the jovial completion, whether you give it the sharp English pronunciation or slowly ease off the word in Maltese, it’s a sound suggestive of heritage and, of course, wine.
Our Wine and Foreign Bottles
To some of us it is second nature, to others it seems odd taking empty wine bottles back to the shop we get them from. Perhaps that is why at times lawmakers as well as private manufacturers care to incentivise people to be more conscientious about the way they dispose of used glass.
Climate Change and Maltese Wine
New research from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Harvard University has found that climate change has caused earlier grape harvests in France and other European countries over the last 30 years.
Sunblock for wine grapes
While in Malta and the rest of the northern hemisphere vines are winter dormant, some antipodean vignerons are busy slapping on sunblock on their ripening grape crop as the summer heat flares up.