Tony Rocca

Books behind my Byline

                                                              BY TONY ROCCA

I was born near Manchester in the north of England, where I grew up and joined a local newspaper at the age of seventeen. I graduated to the Daily Mail  in London where I spent ten years doing many editorial jobs, including a spell as New York correspondent. Then followed a further ten years in London with The Sunday Times as a reporter, feature-writer and foreign correspondent. My fifteen minutes of fame came with the demise of Now!  magazine which suddenly become Then!  (it folded on the very morning I joined). Next came a brief period as features editor of the Mail on Sunday  and several years freelancing from the South of France before Mira and I left for Italy and our adventure in Tuscany. My articles have appeared in most British national newspapers as well as The New York Times  and  Reader's Digest.  

Chianti On The Rocks

A story of accidental winemakers

After toiling for more than twenty years in the vineyards of journalism (and wine bars of Fleet Street) I felt in need of a new challenge and found myself, unexpectedly, exchanging newspaper cuttings for vine ones.  Wine wasn’t the reason Mira and I moved from England to Tuscany, but fate stepped in when our love affair with a Chianti farmhouse hit the rocks having spent our lifetimes’ savings on the purchase. We were reluctant winemakers, but the results were startling. Eventually, after thirteen years, we were even invited to New York as part of a group of ambassadors for Tuscany, to present our wines at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan. Little did anyone there know that the only previous agricultural experience two of the producers had ever had was cultivating geraniums in gritty London window-boxes. 

               The website

               The website

               The bookstore (UK)

               The bookstore (UK)