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 »
It may come as something of a surprise but South America is the second highest wine-producing continent, after Europe. It has some strong home markets (especially Argentina) and big exports from Argentina to north America and from Chile to the UK. But does it offer something distinctive? Do each of the main producing countries have
Signature grapes of South America Read More »
If seven people were independently to choose a bottle of quality wine from their own collections and bring them to a blind tasting what is the chance of them bringing similar wines? That two people brought Chardonnay was perhaps not surprising, even if both examples were from the new world. But in the same tasting,
Chardonnay and Chinon … twice? Read More »
The summer of 2003 in the UK has gone down in the British collective memory as famously hot – to be compared to 1976. While Mediterranean Europe has had other hot summers recently, we have not and so the memory of 2003 has grown rather than receded. Janet and I remember house sitting in that
Caviste’s summer wines have been shown at a number of tastings, most memorably in the presence of a crested eagle – a Bateleur no less – at the Hawk Conservancy. The star of the show had to be woken for his early evening snooze in order to make his celebrity appearance but when he did
Most commuters live a routine and humdrum existence. The times of trains are anchors in ours lives. Mine is the 7:35 from Andover, for Rob, occasional guest blogger on this website, it is the same train but for him it is the 7:49 from Overton. People read their newspapers, books and electronic devices. Some work
Tipple of choice on the 7:35? Read More »
Andover Wine Friends’ May tasting was led by Torquil Jack of Carte du Vin … on the basis of his explorations on two wheels of the byways of France and Spain. Torquil and Marion have turned a hobby into an early retirement business, importing wines from small family wineries, mostly unavailable elsewhere in the UK.
The Overton BBC followed up its recent north and south Rhône tasting with a white Rhône evening. But we started with a very welcome interloper brought by one member who generously contributed a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvée Brut to start the evening off. Some rules are made to be broken! It’s not from the
It is a great moment when a book is published which genuinely marks a substantive change in our knowledge. For decades, wine people have been dependent on Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson’s The world atlas of wine and the same team’s Oxford companion to wine as their basic reference books. Oz Clarke and Margaret Rand
Rare Italian varieties Read More »