I can't believe the response to my coverage of Professor Roger's Corder's researches into red wine and longevity on the island of Sardinia facilitated by a travel bursary from the Geoffrey Roberts Award.
The number of people who have taken the trouble to contact me asking for more details of how they can get their hands on wines from Sardinia, preferably the Nuoro region with its concentration of centenarians, and Georgia (whose centenarians are famous and whose wines are currently being tested by Professor Corder) has been extraordinary.
(I publish only a proportion of the correspondence I receive in your turn. As I have already stated, I try to spare you the repetitious and outrageously fawning. I have a soft spot for the mildly flattering, I have to admit, though I fully realise most of these comments are made simply to get my attention.)
If I were a wine importer I would be hotfooting it to Nuoro immediately to sign up the wineries from which Professor Corder collected his super-healthy wine samples. See recent correspondence in your turn for details.
The future is looking brighter too for Georgian wine whose Tamada brand from GWS (owned by Pernod Ricard of France) was once offered by Safeway supermarkets in Britain. Surely time for a reprise – especially since Georgia's own Saperavi grape is so characterful and lively. I bet that within less than 10 years Saperavi will be being planted by the same sort of ambitious and inquisitive growers around the world who have been experimenting with grapes such as Touriga Nacional, Tempranillo and Nero d'Avola. You read it here first.
