I am delighted and rather surprised to be awarded the WSET/Champagne Board’s 2013 Champagne scholarship as part of my WSET Diploma studies. Part of the surprise was that I did not know that the Wine and Spirit Education Trust gave scholarships, so I was a long way back when the scholarship secretary rang me to
Champagne scholarship 2013 Read More »
Guestblogger: Rob The final BBC1 of the year gave us some good wines and some interesting wines, and an interesting study in the importance of balance and the role played by acidity. Strangely no one spotted the first white. Attractive pale gold colour, strong yeasty, wet wool and lanolin nose, which carried through to a
November’s Bring a Bottle Club was a somewhat random affair – two French classics (Sancerre and a Loire Cabernet Franc), some good regionally important wines (Friulano from Friuli, Grenache from Roussillon, Treixadura from Ribeiro, a Xarel-lo/ Riesling blend from Penedes) and a brace of New World wines (Californian Merlot, White Bordeaux blend from the Cape).
Classic, regional, new world? Read More »
Gussalli Beretta, based in the northern Italian city of Brescia, is a name much better known to collectors of high quality firearms than to wine lovers. But that may be about to change. Under the name of Gussalli Beretta family wineries and distributed in the UK by Antonio Tomassini from Wine and Food Promotions, they
Gussalli Beretta: from guns to wine Read More »
Tim Atkin MW’s theme at Vini Italiani’s Sangiovese evening was ‘embrace the diversity, even the difficulty of Italian wine’. The list of indigenous varieties might seem endless, the DOCs may be ever-expanding, the rules complex and seeming designed to provoke rebellion in a naturally individualistic people, but it’s worth it. Rather like the temperamental Sangiovese
Tim Atkin: on Toscana’s Sangiovese 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »