The wines of Tuscany/Toscana
Celebrating the diversity of Chianti Classico: the 2015 London tasting As wine lovers, we can all have our preferences within the large region which is Tuscany. We might love the bright, cool, austerity of Chianti Rùfina or the richness of the Tuscan coast, but there is no getting away from the point that Chianti Classico
Chianti Classico diversity Read More »
When we casually open a bottle of wine on an evening or a weekend, we have little sense of the severely practical decisions which had to be made for our pleasure. Our biggest concern might be to twist the screw cap or to find the corkscrew. By contrast, there are dozens, even hundreds of decisions
Unglamourous harvest Read More »
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 »
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 »
February’s Bring a Bottle Club was off into unchartered territories … again. It was, however, the last time when we had some clues. The custom has been for each person to bring their bottle or bottles suitably shrouded but for all to know who has contributed each wine. This inevitably leads to inferences being made
Inferences true and false 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