How would Sherlock Holmes deal with wine crime? After all, the famous detective definitely appreciated fine wine. In the very first Holmes story (“The Sign of the Four”) he drank not only red burgundy from Beaune with lunch, but old Hungarian Tokay and three glasses of port after dinner, and
Readers of a certain age will remember Orson Welles assuring us in a 1979 TV commercial for Paul Masson – preserved on YouTube – that “we will sell no wine before its time.” But what is a wine’s time, especially a tannic red one? When is it ready? Not surprisingly,
Sauternes has a problem. And the fact that Sauternes’ problem is not unique among businesses in a constantly changing world, nor even unique among wine regions, doesn’t make the difficulty any less painful. Nor has the problem just raised its head, as it’s been growing for some time now. It’s
Readers of a certain age will remember Orson Welles assuring us in a 1979 TV commercial for Paul Masson – preserved on YouTube – that “we will sell no wine before its time.” But what is a wine’s time, especially a tannic red one? When is it ready? Not surprisingly,
The 2015 vintage in Bordeaux was striking – amazingly so. Actually stunning. In the sense that those of us who recently had early samples of the wines at the Bordeaux en primeur tastings in April were both awed and mystified by this vintage. First, because the wines were so smooth
Hong Kong. A city of more than 7 million people shoehorned into a small parcel of land on China’s southeastern coast. This is an Asian city with a growing Western influence, with food and drink a central cultural tenet. Despite a rapid growth in middle-class incomes since the mid-1990s, the
It was a great summer for drinking second wines. During Vinexpo in June, there was the vibrant 2014 Fleur de Pédseclaux, sampled from the barrel at the reawakened château’s dazzling new winery in Pauillac, just across the road from the Rothschilds. Then there was Silvio Nardi’s Rosso di Montalcino at a dinner
No one in this post-Rudy Kurniawan, post-fake Chinese Lafite wine world can remain ignorant about wine fraud. After decades of more or less ignoring the problem, lately it’s been all hands on deck. Legal authorities are systematizing how to punish offenders. Engineers are devising clever systems for keeping track of