Where are the highest vineyards in Europe. Switzerland? The Alto Adige perhaps? Both have sites that are vertiginous when you compare them to most of the continent’s classic wine regions....
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Singing The Same Tune
It’s just over 100 years since Rudolf Steiner delivered his eight-lecture Agriculture Course in Kobertwitz (Kobierzyce in present-day Poland). Sometimes described as the world’s first organic agriculture course, one that...
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The Vauxhall Paulée
The Jesuit promise to take the child and return the man holds loosely for wine. Making the right calls during the formative stages of production should help deliver successful outcomes....
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Reasons To Be Cheerful
This is never a particularly joyful month for the wine industry. Nobody is ever buying much just after Christmas. And these days, the festival of self-denying piousness that is Dry...
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A Different Path
Did any grower ever say, ‘I’m looking for a really cold, wet site – Yorkshire, maybe, or Derbyshire – so I can plant Ortega and Huxelrebe and Rondo’? Equally, how...
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What Have Wine Merchants Ever Done for Us?
Of course, I stole the title of this article from Monty Python. One reason I did so lies in its absurdity. After all, wine merchants in the UK have played...
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Why I Like Wine People
The times we live in being what they are, I need to start with a few disclaimers. No, I don’t doubt at all that there is a dark side to...
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Tasting Terroir
My scientific credentials are embarrassing. I struggled to get a C grade in Physics with Chemistry O Level in my teens. By dint of rote learning and conversations with winemakers,...
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Making A Shift
Haut-Brion holds a hallowed place not only in today’s luxury wine market and wine history but also for the people who study terroir identity, authenticity, and, of course, branding. Its...
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Under The Influence
It wasn’t the most sublime wine moment of 2024 but it was the most watched. During April’s London Marathon, wine merchant Tom Gilbey (interviewed on Cork Talk last week) stopped...
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A Wine Of One’s Own
“The closer you get to the equator, the warmer it becomes,” says the Wine and Spirit Education Trust in explaining vinous geography. So true. When you live in the tropics,...
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Wine’s Epiphany
When did you last cry? From pain, relief, elation? Was it a book, a movie? Were you bidding some farewell for a year, for ever? For me, it is often...
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