There's a 'North' Adriatic?
Year 15, No. 12
Highlights: North Adriatic 2025
There’s nothing headline grabbing anymore in stating that wine has a few problems these days. But, when it comes to Substack and those writing about this fine alcoholic beverage, there’s a specific problem that their ´Stacks are categorized under Food & Drink. This is ridiculous as one can very much have drink without food, or vice versa if need be as we’re not savages.
This doesn’t seem set to change which means that the wine bits of Substack are cast adrift on the vast sea that is food writing on the plaform. Thus, those wine types in the Drinks department are a lot like Icelandic folk techno metal being grouped under ‘music’ when K-pop exists. In other words, good luck finding the ‘WineStack’, which does indeed exist in its very special way.
I say this as when taking a new look at the state of wine media (*), I reached out to find as many Substacks about wine as I could. It’s grown massively as a medium overall in recent years and I think we’re finally to a solid round up of all the wine Substacks that have a paid subscription. This grand group is, after several revisions, now totaling 44 in number. So yes, most definitely the Icelandic folk techno metal of Substack’s Food & Drink category.
All of these Substacks (along with those in ‘legacy’ media) are included in an updated version of The List (*) which is free for anyone to peruse and hopefully find new reads, concepts, wines, and dare I say, ‘hope’ for this bizarre age in which we live.
In addition to finding new WineStack folks, something else that was new to me recently was the concept of the ‘North’ Adriatic.
For anyone who follows my writings, you’ll know that in addition to Spain and Southern France, I cover the wines of Croatia, Slovenia, and a ‘spritz’ of Italy, as much as is possible. Given this, I was asked to join a trip that sliced off a chunk of these three to create a rather fine way to comprehend what is overall a spaghetti of smaller regions, names, and grape varieties that are often the same, but with different names.
You can read this in the North Adriatic Regional Report as well as the combined Tasting Reports which see 260 wines rated and reviewed.
And of course, it wouldn’t be fall without some kind of recap on the 2025 harvest, but let’s make it bit different and take a look at what’s happening on the island of Santorini, Greece. (*)
Drink well, be well.
-Miquel
(*) Free to read