In my village of Gallinaro in Italy we've just finished the eighth annual festival of Cabernet, where all the local producers present their wines to the thousands of visitors who come to enjoy free tastings and free food. Even my cantina gets roped into being an outlet for the free-flowing red wine that left a whole town with a communal hangover the next day.

It's a historical accident that the Comino Valley has become a centre for the production of Cabernet Sauvignon. In the middle of the nineteenth century the Visocchi family brought the French vines here and they found that the soil and climate were ideally suited to this variety. A hundred years before the Tuscans began to experiment with Cabernet, we were growing and vinifying it.

Until last year this production was entirely non-commercial, in the sense that this wine was never bottled for distribution. Now we have a new DOC, 'Atina', which is an umbrella name for the Cabernets from the valley. But the act of establishing a recognisable and consistent DOC wine means that much of the local character of the wine is lost. Pasteurising and filtering, requirements for a stable commercial wine, change the taste of the plain, rustic wine more than a little.

I have friends and relatives here who refuse to drink any bottled wine. They claim to taste the bi-sulphites that are used as stabilisers and therefore reject the wine as 'not genuine'. In a way they're right, but the alternative is the old system. Small producers, with perhaps 1,000 litres to sell, made buying wine something of a lottery. Someone who made a good wine one year could make a vile one the next. Simple, basic technology means much of the vinification process is left to chance. For consistency year after year you need more sophisticated technology, something that's out of reach for the maker of less than 5,000 litres.

Every year I bring back the best of the local wines that I've tasted and every year I'm disappointed when I get them home. The wine travels badly because it's simple, untreated, unstable fermented grape juice. Drink it in situ and it can be sublime, but it's pleasures remain tied to it's place of origin.

Wine of the Week

Klein Constantia Cabernet Sauvignon 1996

This wine, from Constantia near Cape Town, might force some of my Italian friends to change their minds about bottled wine. Matured for two years in French oak, it's well-balanced and complex and is already drinking well, although it could easily age a few
more years in the bottle.

Available Superquinn, McCabes and Redmonds, RRP £12.95