Il Palagio is the 350 hectare Tuscan estate owned by musician Sting and his wife Trudie Styler. Sting has assembled a dream team to work his estate, with Alan York giving viticultural advice (the entire estate is run biodynamically), Paolo Caciorgna overseeing the winemaking and terroir expert Pedro Parra helping keep the soils in order. The estate was in disrepair when they purchased it in 1999, and the vineyards were replanted over the next couple of years. These three wines were just the second release following this replanting activity...

In Gateshead, arts organisations such as the Baltic centre for contemporary art and the Sage are protected from deep local authority cuts – unlike in Newcastle. A host of artists connected to north-east England – including musicians Sting, Neil Tennant, Bryan Ferry, Mark Knopfler and Thomas Allen, writers such as Pat Barker and Tony Harrison, and actors including Robson Green and Kevin Whately – have written to the Guardian expressing "alarm" at what they call Newcastle city council's "shortsighted attack" on the city's cultural life. The artists are protesting against the local authority's plan to cut completely its £2.5m culture budget. The council, argue the artists, risk "throwing away a shared cultural heritage... built up by generations and generations of ordinary people in the city." Its decision, they say, is "baffling"...