WEEKLY NEWS SCAN OF THE LATEST WINE, DRINKS, FOOD & TRAVEL NEWS

Each week we comb the Internet for interesting wine, food, drinks and travel stories (including our own content) to share with our readers.

In this issue...

  • The Best Time to Visit Puglia, Italy
  • Should you Use an Online Travel Agency for your next Trip?
  • Special Offer: Newly Discounted River Cruise for Wine Lovers
  • East Texas Brings a new Flavor to Texas Wines
  • New Data Predicts Best, Worst Times to Buy Airline Tickets
  • Why Some Wineries are Aging their Wine Underwater
  • A Visit to Rupert Murdoch's Wine Cave

We hope you enjoy! Cheers!
WHEN IS THE BEST TIME TO VISIT
PUGLIA, ITALY
Puglia-Italy
Puglia has a temperate Mediterranean climate with mild(ish) winters and hot summers and averaging 300 sunny days a year making this a destination for all seasons.

Puglia, located in the south, in heel of Italy, sandwiched between the Ionian and Adriatic seas, has become one of Italy’s most popular holiday destinations. It offers ancient towns with long histories, extravagant churches, bizarre conical-roofed trulli houses, fabulous masseria hotels which have been converted from traditional fortified manor houses and a great deal of Baroque splendour.
SHOULD YOU USE AN ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCY FOR YOUR NEXT TRIP?
Photo by Frank Vessia on Unsplash
By Christopher Elliott, Contributor to Forbes

Ron Brown wants to know why people bother with online travel agencies anymore. When he travels, he uses sites like Expedia and Booking.com to find a low airfare or hotel rate, but then buys directly through an airline or hotel. 

"I've never found a better price through an online travel agency," he says. "So why bring in an unnecessary third party?"

His question goes to the heart of a debate many travelers are having as they start planning their summer vacations. Should you use an online travel agency for your next trip? If so, when?
SPECIAL OFFER:
NEWLY DISCOUNTED RIVER CRUISE
FOR WINE LOVERS!
Photo by Wilfred Wong on Unsplash
Have you ever thought about taking a river cruise? Now might be the right time!

Enjoy the sweet life aboard AmaDolce with less than 150 guests. Travel to France and spend 7 nights in luxury while cruising the Garonne and Dordogne rivers to the legendary wine capital, Bordeaux. Visit rolling vineyards, taste incredible wines and feast on gourmet food.

This limited-time offer from Alliance Travel Partners includes a $1,000 per Stateroom discount, $200 Stateroom Shipboard Credit and Complimentary Upgrade.
EAST TEXAS BRINGS A NEW FLAVOR TO TEXAS WINES
At Kiepersol Vineyards & Winery, south of Tyler, a resident flock of guinea hens provides the soundtrack for an afternoon of wine tasting. Their squawks, which sound like something between fingernails-on-a-blackboard and a chainsaw, might surprise unwitting guests. Yet these South African birds are the vineyard’s first line of defense against agricultural pests—and just one sign that East Texas winemakers do things a little differently.

Texas now has more than 500 wineries, mostly in the Hill Country and High Plains regions but also in far-flung corners of the state. The most popular region for wine tourism in Texas is the Hill Country, especially along US 290 between Johnson City and Fredericksburg. This stretch is so popular that wineries from Lubbock, Comanche, and Bryan have set up tasting rooms there to reach customers. Last year, Los Pinos Ranch Vineyards in Pittsburg, a town of fewer than 5,000 residents between Dallas and Texarkana, opened a US 290 tasting room in a shared space with San Saba’s Wedding Oak Winery. Some visitors expressed surprise that East Texas wineries existed at all.

In fact, there are more than 20 wineries and vineyards along the self-guided Piney Woods Wine Trail—three of which are spotlighted here. They offer tours, tastings, and dining, with hearty doses of innovation.
NEW DATA PREDICTS BEST, WORST TIMES TO BUY AIRLINE TICKETS
Cellphone-Boarding-App
The travel booking platform Qtrip has released its sixth annual airfare study on the best and worst times to buy airline tickets in 2020, with an array of interesting data.
The study by the southern California-based firm, whose sister company is CheapAir.com, is based on an analysis of 917 million airfares in more than 8,000 markets.

"Chasing the lowest airfare can be a dizzying, if not maddening, experience," Jeff Klee, CEO of Qtrip and CheapAir.com,  said in a statement . "Our Annual Airfare Study aims to bring a little clarity to the process, and some peace of mind. The study is part of our wider mission to give travelers the transparency to know what they’re buying, the data and selection to make smart choices, the flexibility to pay on their terms, and the support to deal with the unexpected.”

Here are some of the highlights:
WHY SOME WINERIES ARE AGING THEIR WINES UNDERWATER
Underwater-Wine
Ever since some Champagne was recovered from a sunken ship in the Baltic Sea in 2010, there’s been a renewed interest in underwater wines. The bubbly was reported to be in great condition, despite being 170 years old. The ocean’s combination of darkness, cool temperature, and pressure created idyllic aging conditions for the 168 bottles on board.

Wineries have considered the approach for ages. For sparkling wine, especially, the ocean offers a cool and pressurized environment that invited longevity. But still wines appreciate the habitat as well. Like a musty old underground cellar, the ocean is without a lot of the things that can potentially harm wine, like light and heat (the impact of thirsty sharks has yet to be explored fully).
A VISIT TO RUPERT MURDOCH'S WINE CAVE
One of the world's most powerful and feared media barons also makes wine.
Care for a glass?
It's not every day that Town & Country wine writer Jay McInerney gets an invitation from Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall to visit their penthouse in New York.

McInerney was invited in his capacity as a wine critic. In 2013 Murdoch purchased a vineyard in Bel Air called Moraga. One of only a handful of incorporated wineries in Los Angeles County, Moraga is the legacy of the late Tom Jones, an aerospace executive who decided in the 1970s to plant vines in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country.

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