Ben Llewellyn of local wine merchant Caviste starts in a philosophical mode for the monthly tasting of Andover Wine Friends. His theme is ‘what is a modern classic?’ Is it a meaningful concept or just a piece of wine trade nonsense? We can talk meaningfully about the classics of literature or art or even wine
Ben’s modern classics Read More »
A timely offer from Winedirect gave a perfect theme for a fine wine supper: Critics’ Choice Spain, a half case of bottles of which had received good scores from Robert Parker, Jancis Robinson et al. In the last twenty years or so, the track record of Spanish wine has changed markedly – from the supplier
Critics’ Choice Spain Read More »
The Great Rheingau Riesling Review was primarily about launching the excellent 2011 dry wines. These are the ‘Erstes Gewächs’, the premier or grand cru wines from the top estates in the Rheingau, in the modern dry style. But if you want to catch the attention of journalists and writers you need to give them something
Rheingau Riesling rapture Read More »
Guest post: Rob As regular readers of this blog know, the BBC has seen a recent trend of the rise of the “joker”, as some members of the group have sought to test our blind tasting skills by the ever more unusual offering. Did last Tuesday 21st August meeting see the start of the fightback
At last some wines we recognise! Read More »
July’s BBC 2 blind tasting was on the theme of Austria, with recourse to Germany as necessary. As Austrian wines are not widely available in the UK and few wine lovers have Austrian bottles in their collections, we agreed to allow German bottles as a second option. And, let’s be honest, we were all concerned
The term ‘entry level’ is a very useful marketing and quality phrase, indicating some real quality, affordable price (a relative term itself) and the enticement of something outstanding at a much higher price. It gets around the problem neatly which you have in Italian where the normal term for entry level wine is ‘base’ wine
Entry level grand cru? Read More »
Summer should be a time of relaxation, outdoor parties and pink wine. So far the British summer has been a soggy mess, but rosé / rosato / rosado still has its attractions. Andover Wine Friends’ summer party had to be held indoors for the first time in four years and fortunately we had build a
One of the quirky charms of Overton’s ‘Bring a Bottle Club’ is the practice – usually followed by one of the regular members – of bringing a joker bottle to be tasted blind, like all the wine. There are not many other places where you could taste a 10-year old English rosé, a Maltese red
Mission impossible Read More »
Since a visit to Chianti Rufina last summer, I miss no chance to taste or talk about these wines. I was therefore delighted that the Wine Society offered a mixed tasting case which was the perfect starting point for a Fine Wine supper. The wines were from two socially contrasting estates, the workmanlike Grati (also
Two Chianti Rufina estates Read More »
One way of dealing with the overwhelming complexity of the world of wine is to decide that there certain wines/grapes/styles that you don’t like. A few popular favourites would be a) German wine (sweet and flavourless) b) English wine (how could you? see previous post) c) over-oaked Chardonnay (agreed). My number one choice would be
Beaujolais: prejudice confounded Read More »