Writing about the wines of Piemonte, Italy and France
The wines of California
Why the Judgment of Overton? Two of our tasting group decided to collect the wines to re-run the so-called Judgement of Paris. In short, this blind tasting in 1976 changed the world of wine. It demonstrated that Californian wines can be of the same quality level as the top wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Our
The Judgement of Overton, 2021 Read More »
The world of wine contains many surprises for the unwary. One rule of thumb is that as vineyard altitude rises, the average temperatures drop (0.6º C per 100m is the standard figure) and the resulting wine styles become fresher and more acidic. But Napa is different in this regard. As any wine student will know the
Napa stands on its head Read More »
Being a wine student you have to drink – well at least taste – a whole gamut of wines you would never normally buy. Sadly this is not just top class Clarets or Australian superstars; it applies equally to ‘commercially important, widely available’ wines. So this includes white Zinfandel, Black Tower, and the like. You have
Apothic – friend or foe? Read More »
How ‘natural’ is natural? Wine buyers are normally caught between two extremes. On the one hand, supermarkets and bars are mainly stocked with wines made on an industrial scale, to a formula tested in the market. These wines may well have some character, but they are treated like any other volume product. A major consideration
How natural is natural? Read More »
It’s tough being Chardonnay – on the one hand, you are so popular that you have become a girl’s name; on the other hand, people have tired of you and have moved on to Pinot Grigio and even Moscato. But once you get into quality wines, the real appeal of the grape to the drinker
Chameleon Chardonnay Read More »
A volume producer who makes interesting, even classy, wines is a real rarity. It is really difficult to be consistently good when handling large volumes of fruit from different locations with slightly varying picking dates and levels of maturity. Blending volumes tends to bring the quality down to the lowest common factor. Andover Wine Friends’
Cool coastal Californians Read More »
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
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 »
The Eyrie Vineyards are widely credited with the creation of Oregon as the Pinot Noir state of the USA. The state has just celebrated 50 years of growing grapes for one of the world’s most elusive wine styles, celebrated by Stephen Brook in his up-to-date tribute in the February 2012 edition of Decanter magazine. But
Eyrie Vineyards: more than Pinot Noir Read More »