At the recent Rheingau Riesling 2012 launch in London, there were also tables dedicated to other regions with VDP status, the collection of wineries in Germany with the best sites and wines. Whereas Rheingau is basically dedicated to Riesling with Pinot Noir as a sideshow, other regions have completely different traditions. Weingut Dr Heger showed
Dipping a toe into Baden Read More »
The Rheingau preview in London once again gave the chance to evaluate the latest vintage – 2012 – and, by way of advertisement or just sheer joie de vivre (for which there must be a German equivalent), the celebration of old vintages, still in the prime of life. In the Rheingau, 2012 was light in
Riesling – 1-year, 30-year or 60-year old? Read More »
The wines of South Africa have a very mixed reputation in the UK. Ordinary consumers only rate them by price; wine lovers will buy the high-end wines as examples of mainly warm climate styles which can compete with the rest of the New World. But we rarely get the chance to explore that middle ground
Stony Brook–artisan quality in Franschhoek Read More »
For the second time in a row, we decided to postpone a planned blind tasting on the theme of sparkling wine. While last time the excuse was that it was late July and people were away, this time it was because it was late August. Most of us are so keen on the sparkling wine
Andover Wine Friends unusually had a fine wine supper in August … and also, atypically, indulged in a bit of blind tasting masochism. Speaking for myself I normally enjoy the considerable challenge of blind tasting, even though it is a very artificial exercise. This is not just for the rare moments of triumph when you
Blind tasting masochism? Read More »
Perhaps not surprisingly in mid-August, we had a rather reduced BBC 1 – just seven wines to try to identify and, more importantly, to enjoy. Looking back over the wines, of these seven only three were ‘should have got that’ wines. The others were impossibly difficult or just a bit odd as was one of
Janet and I have been meaning to go to L’Ortolan, the Michelin-starred restaurant near Reading, for longer than I can remember, a couple of decades perhaps. It sprang to fame as John Burton-Race’s place (long before celebrity beckoned) but today it is in the talented hands of Alan Murchison. Janet tried to book online for
Gravner’s orange wine at L’Ortolan Read More »
This meeting of Overton’s blind tasting group should have been a so-called ‘BBC 2’, that is on a theme, in this case, sparkling wine. But we postponed that for another day and so had a completely random tasting, each person bringing a bottle of their choice. And my, was it difficult … or were we
Blind tasting bulls-eye? Read More »
Review of Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop MW, Authentic wine: towards natural and sustainable winemaking, University of California Press, 2011 The debate between natural and conventional wine makers is normally something of a shouting match between two sides who really do not want to meet and find a middle way. On the one hand the
Authentic or natural? Read More »
What does a top winemaker do in his, as it were, spare time? After he has supervised the creation and blending of large volumes of good to high quality Cava and mid-range to premium red wines … what does his mind turn to? Producing tiny quantities of a new, experimental wine which changes every year.
Delfi’s playground Read More »