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. Nobody knows for sure where the name of Malta’s very own green-skinned grape variety comes from. It […]
Robots and Precision Viticulture
Soon enough vignerons will be assisted by intelligent machines that autonomously roam their vineyards in similar fashion to the Mars Rover or Star Wars’ R2D2. Robots will measure the condition of the vines and grapes and tell the grower which vine needs special TLC. Today the use of robotics in viticulture may still be at […]
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. Grapes in France are now being picked two weeks sooner on average than they were in the past. Each degree Celsius of […]
A Chapter On Maltese Vermentino
Ten years ago, we had a hard time even spelling Vermentino. Yet today it’s one of the most promising white wine grapes in Malta. I can hardly believe that I didn’t even give Vermentino as much as a mention or a footnote in my guide to the wines of Malta at the time. I wasn’t […]
Delicata Pruning Seminars
Over 150 of Delicata’s grape growers have recently attended three seminars held in the company’s wine cellars and on Gozo to learn more about winter pruning methods and vineyard sanitation techniques, all of which fall under Delicata’s ongoing sustainable viticultural programme. The main topics lectured on by Delicata’s viticultural experts focused on many of the […]
