Meg Maker

6 days ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

Francesca Vaira fetched me from my hotel in Alba, her infant son, Giuseppe, asleep in the back seat. It was a Sunday afternoon in early February, the sun brilliant after a sodden week that I’d spent in tasting rooms and lecture halls. Sunday is family day in Italy, but Francesca made the time. First she toured me around the Barolo hills, rising into the medieval town itself and stopping next to vineyards to survey the scene: vines upon vines.

1 week ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

Earlier this month, the World Food Photography Award winners were announced, and I was pleased to take Second Place in the category Errazuriz Wine Photographer of the Year – Places. I captured that photo, “Barrel Stencils in Cockburn’s Workshop” (above), during a visit and tour of their port lodge in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. Like many of their peers, Symington Family Estates, which owns Cockburn’s, maintains in-house wood shops to care for barrel stocks.

3 weeks ago | circleofwinewriters.org | Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker questions the role of the reader in wine writing, and in doing so, reflects on the purpose of the writing itself. I recently published a long memoiristic essay about a press trip I had taken in Northern Italy. A fellow wine journalist posted a comment asking, "Who's the reader?"It's a valid question. Whenever we sit down to write an article, we should consider our reader, and some ways that means we act as both writer and editor.

1 month ago | circleofwinewriters.org | Meg Maker

How should wine writers respond to a global trade war? This is the question Circle Chair Meg Maker poses as she interviews some circle members and others address the current moment. What is the role and future of wine writing given this moment of global economic uncertainty? At the extreme, the flow of wine will slow, prices will rise, wine consumption will drop, and wine consumer demographics will shift. Wine communication will shift, too.

1 month ago | terroirreview.com | Meg Maker

I was collected at the Florence airport by a stocky man in his late fifties. “Parla inglese, signore?” I asked, as he slung my bag into the trunk. He smiled. “No — a leetle.”I apologized for my own meagre Italian. “Il mio italiano è molto semplice.”“Va bene!” he boomed, unconvinced. My accent is better than my vocabulary. Once we’d made our way out of the airport’s labyrinth, I tried to make small talk.