Writing about the wines of Piemonte, Italy and France
the wines of Emilia
My favourite wines – for a special occasion, celebrating the end of MW exams
My favourite wines Read More »
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 »
Recently, because of studying for wine exams, I have had to concentrate on tasting mainstream, commercial wines. If it isn’t ‘widely available and commercially important’ sadly it isn’t high on my current list of priorities. This is a complete volte-face for me. Normally, I would seek out the local varieties and ignore the Cabernets, Chardonnays
The Italian road less travelled Read More »
The much anticipated, much postponed BBC (‘bring a bottle club’) on the theme of sparkling wine finally took place in September, having been chosen as a theme for birthdays in July and August. It proved very instructive with one prejudice being confirmed and a couple of others weakened. In terms of blind tasting it does
Champagne still sparkles Read More »
September’s BBC2 was a postponed celebration of a birthday – and the custom is that the birthday girl gets to choose the theme which in this case was Sangiovese. The likelihood, therefore, was there would be quite a lot of Tuscan, or at least, central Italian wines. The questions for a blind tasting might be:
Savoury Sangiovese Read More »
Andover Wine Friends’ March tasting was designed to have some fun while tasting a range of sparkling wines blind. It certainly achieved the first aim. The blind tasting part showed some the difficulties of this game all too clearly: 1. Sparkling pink wines don’t give a lot away Apart from an occasional difference in colour
Sparkling wine in the dark Read More »
When we think of Italian wine, we have established regions in mind – Valpolicella, Soave or Sicily if we are stood in front of a supermarket shelf, Barolo, Montalcino or Montepulciano, perhaps, if we are talking to a specialist wine merchant. In these contexts it is inevitably the regions which produce high volume at low
For much of human history, wine was sweet. Winemakers didn’t have the knowledge to get wines to ferment out completely and so inevitably the result was sweet. And anyway, people like sweet things and, it could be said, some sweetness can cover up a number of faults. In the last twenty years, fashion has dictated