When we casually open a bottle of wine on an evening or a weekend, we have little sense of the severely practical decisions which had to be made for our pleasure. Our biggest concern might be to twist the screw cap or to find the corkscrew. By contrast, there are dozens, even hundreds of decisions
Unglamourous harvest Read More »
Our local blind tasting group, at my request, focused last night on Merlot. Why? Because I find it more difficult to detect than the Cabernets or even Syrah, which I also find a bit of a puzzle. We had a good line up – seven wines, six of which I would be happy to drink
Ch. de Mercuès is a proper if very elegant castle. Its website shows the towers of chateau emerge form the mists of South West France. On the same website the wine plays second fiddle to the luxury hotel but nonetheless they are clearly proud of it. In the glass the wine comes over as a
Big birthday dinner, an English evening outside Just occasionally the English weather plays a hugely positive role in a special celebration. For the last few weeks, we have been enjoying a warm, even hot, summer and the evening of my birthday was the last moment of this hot spell. We planned to have the first
Big birthday dinner Read More »
Wine writers and drinkers have been exercised by what is referred to as premature oxidation in white Burgundy since the 1996 vintage. This is a slightly vague condition in which high quality wines from top village, Premier Cru and Grand Cru sites fail to live up to their promise, being either obviously oxidised or just
How does white Burgundy age? Read More »
What can one expect of a bottle of Saint-Emilion Grand Cru? Due to the rules of the appellation, expectations should be limited as 50% of the wine is deemed to be Grand Cru. (If you want the really classy stuff the label needs to read Premier Grand Cru Classé – or of course you need
Ch. Cantin, St-Emilion Read More »
UK wine drinkers are much in the debt of Australian wine. If we think back to the ‘pre-Australian’ period of UK wine retailing we were limited to French classics, German hock and what we fairly politely referred to as Spanish plonk. I’m sure it wasn’t quite as bad as that but that’s what it feels
Australia in two styles Read More »
John Hoskins MW believes that the world’s wine styles are converging. In the context of the extremely demanding Master of Wine tasting exam, this means that it is yet more difficult to tell your Burgundian Chardonnay from a wine from Tasmania or the coastal strip of Victoria. Climate change and better viticultural practice in Burgundy
Super cool Australia Read More »
Wine study has many benefits. It leads to an accumulation of a great deal of knowledge, hopefully, accompanied by insight and understanding. It certainly gets you to amazing places, whether we are talking about grand, architect-designed wineries or the small shed from which the precious bottles emerge. But most of all it leads to great
This page is a repository for tasting notes of wines predominantly made from the Sangiovese grape variety which are, or have been, available in the UK in early 2013. I hope the selection has a charmingly whimsical air about it as it is, in the modern parlance, random. This is partly because I have included
Sangiovese in the UK Read More »
