Big birthday dinner, an English evening outside Just occasionally the English weather plays a hugely positive role in a special celebration. For the last few weeks, we have been enjoying a warm, even hot, summer and the evening of my birthday was the last moment of this hot spell. We planned to have the first
Big birthday dinner Read More »
Wine study has many benefits. It leads to an accumulation of a great deal of knowledge, hopefully, accompanied by insight and understanding. It certainly gets you to amazing places, whether we are talking about grand, architect-designed wineries or the small shed from which the precious bottles emerge. But most of all it leads to great
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 »
I love writing pieces for this website but just occasionally it is good to have another voice, somebody else takes on a tasting. So here is the view of Tim Pierce, owner of GrapeExpectations, on the giro d’Italia which I led with his wines. It was a real pleasure to be in Longparish, just outside
Longparish’s Italian tour Read More »
Two red wines showing some age are served side by side in a blind tasting. As wine ages it become increasingly difficult to age it accurately. If it is genuinely old, say more than 20 years, you feel quite good if you get the right decade, unless you know your vintages extremely well. The first
Valbuena 1985 twice: what’s the chance? 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 »
Andover Wine Friends’ fine wine supper for February 2014 set itself a modest challenge. When trios of related wines are tasted without knowing their identities, can a mixed group of tasters tell which is the best quality? and, further, did the group know what the wines were? The answers were, on the whole, encouraging! What
Rising to the quality challenge Read More »
After the excitement of the old Palo Cortado sherry, I choose to compare these two excellent wines from the Tuscan Maremma. On your left is the top wine of the tiny Massa Vecchia, near Massa Marittima, mostly Sangiovese with some Alicante, from the single vineyard, La Querciola. On your right, you have the riserva of
Maremman Christmas – La Parrina goes head to head with Massa Vecchia Read More »
Hot foot from visiting 30 wine regions for her major revision of Christie’s Encylopedia of Champagne and Sparkling Wine, Essi Avellan MW introduces 16 traditional-method sparkling wines. What she showed was how many places – including some very surprising locations – where the high quality sparkling wine is being made. Please excuse any minor errors –
Essi’s sparkling world tour Read More »
The November ‘bring any bottle you like’ version of Overton’s blind tasting group produced three categories of wines – bankers (wines you had a chance of spotting), ‘on a good day’ (if the force is with you) and ‘you have got to be joking’. Plus one in the ‘mission impossible’ class as well. Most quality
Bankers to the impossible Read More »