One bright Sunday morning this Spring I put on my walking boots and entered the first enormous hall of the the world’s largest wine trade show: ProWein 2016, in Dusseldorf, Germany. Having decided that this is my year of doing things differently, this winter I was delighted to be a
I admit it, I've become obsessed by mouse taint. If that seems strange or perverse, let me expand. Most wine faults in this day and age are pretty well understood. We know a fair bit about Brettanomyces, volatile acidity, reduction and many other common complaints. Not so with the stray rodent
Unless you hold a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, chances are your university drinking experiences did not extend to the consumption of vintage Ports sipped on fire-lit winter’s evenings as you pored over reference texts. Fine Ports, like youth, shouldn’t be wasted on the young getting wasted. But a word
Some years ago, as a fun project, three young men decided to make wine while they were at university together. Today, their winery is legendary for its wines as well as its winemaking and viticultural practices in the Vittoria region of Sicily. The young men were Titta [Giambattista] Cilia, Giusto
Harvest is under way and internationally known enologist Alberto Antonini is giving a master class on the coming vintage. Behind him, framed in the large windows of the new winery, a landscape of terraced vineyards unfolds under a lacy blue sky, a view reminiscent of his native Italy. But these
I write a lot about natural wines, which leads to two frequent occurrences: 1. People rib and pigeon-hole from time to time. I take it with good grace, occasionally pointing out that my interests and drinking tastes go beyond funky smelling cloudy swamp-juice. 2. A need to defend the positive
Several years ago when I was on assignment in Bordeaux, one of the winemakers I interviewed was Esme Johnstone, a former major British wine merchant who had taken up residence as director of Château de Sours near Saint-Quentin-de-Baron. His biggest opportunity, Johnstone told me, was to make loads of rosé
“Great wine? To me it does not exist. In fact, what do you mean by this word, ‘great?' Famous, expensive, noble…? To me, even a humble Vernatsch with a daily meal can be ‘great’ if it is representative of its region. That’s why I’m not interested in tasting a ‘great