Italian wine

Antinori: kick-starting the Italian quality revolution

Decanter’s vertical tasting of the Antinori Super Tuscan wines was a remarkable chance to compare five vintages of Tignanello and Solaia going back thirty years.  But more than that, in Marchese Piero Antinori’s presence, it became a fascinating cross-section through the quality revolution in Italian winemaking over the last forty years.  As Antinori explained, in

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Things can only get better

May’s BBC 1 – bring any quality bottle or the odd joker and taste them blind  – threw up a distinctly mixed bag.  The whites in general,, unusually, did not shine, the one sparkling wine met a distinctly mixed reception and the evening was saved by good company and a high standard in the reds. 

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Sparkling wine in the dark

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

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Pale, red and elegant

With the whole world of wine to choose from, which three grape varieties would you group together for a focused red wine tasting where there is noticeable relationship between the varieties? The two Cabs and Merlot would be one obvious choice – but the range of styles around the world might lead to a loss

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Puglia – the quality revolution

Andover Wine Friends’ January tasting gave the opportunity to review the stirrings of a quiet revolution going on in the heel of Italy. Puglia’s recent history – to add to the waves of foreign overloads going back to Greek times – has been of a reduction of the huge production, overproduction, of the 1980s (13

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Cremant de Jura

Pictorial BBC1

It has been a demanding week – work has been full on, Diploma viticulture and vinification exam on Wednesday evening, Christmas hovering closer.  So instead of lots of words, here is a list and a pictorial version of the ‘bring a bottle club’ for December.  Normal service will be resumed shortly! Don’t miss the picture of

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Burgundy v Piedmont

That there is a competitive streak among many men is hardly an earth-shattering observation.  Wine tasting can be social, relaxed, erudite and many other things but it also can be competitive.  Ben Llewellyn, MD of Caviste set up Thursday evening’s tasting as a competition – between two of Europe’s best established and prestigious regions.  Burgundy

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Mission impossible

Asking the owner of an independent wine shop to choose just six wines to show off his wines is definitely mission impossible.  If the shop is a creation of one person, he or she has spent hundreds of hours and selfless tasted probably thousands of wines to pick the stock … and then they have

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Blind tasting oddities?

Blind tasting of random wines again … I think the best thing is to group the wines by type, clarity after the event being so much easier to achieve than at the time. So off we go with a, er, peculiarity: It’s definitely red, it’s sparkling, it’s slightly sweet … it’s not Shiraz, it’s lighter

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Friuli in overview

Decanter’s Friuli day featured both a master class by Peter McCombie MW and the chance to taste a large range of wines from about 30 producers from this most northeasterly region of Italy.  This was a good complement to our recent Mario Schiopetto tasting which showed how house style is important as grape variety.  Peter,

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