There’s something reminiscent of Fashion Week about the Benvenuto Brunello event in Montalcino, with visitor passes, photographers, security guards and large tents. Amongst it all, this is where I tasted...
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Searching for the succulence of Pinot Noir
There are some tastings that you’d cross a busy motorway intersection blindfold to attend. I don’t know what does it for you, but a line-up of village level, premier and...
Read MoreAn agnostic’s view of natural wines
The future of wine or a heap of hooey? Just like bio-dynamics, Dr Rudolf Steiner’s so-called “spiritual science”, the subject of natural wines tends to provoke extreme opinions. Listening to...
Read MoreThe Zen of Koshu
There aren’t many wine styles that are unfamiliar to most people in the booze trade, but Japanese Koshu is surely one of them. I don’t mind admitting that before the...
Read MoreThe 2009 Burgundy vintage: second opinion
“You call that work? ” asked a friend of mine when I told him about the rigours of Burgundy week in early January. “Most people would pay serious amounts of...
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We need to talk about Kevin
The bar was almost empty when I arrived for a late lunch at the Fulham Wine Rooms with Kevin Judd last Friday. The only other punters were a famous ex-footballer...
Read MoreMy wine wish list for 2011
2011 may have eased stiff-limbed out of the starting blocks, but it’s stumbled such a short way down the track that I hope you won’t mind me making a wine...
Read MoreTowards a new Chile (Part Two)
I had an unprecedented number of exciting wines on my recent trip to Chile, several of them made from Carmenère, a grape I once described as a “second division variety”....
Read MoreTowards a new Chile (Part One)
How would you like to be remembered? I have a horrible suspicion that when my spittoon is emptied for the last time I will for ever be associated with an...
Read MoreThe world beyond Bordeaux
Here we go again. The high octane excitement surrounding the 2009 Bordeaux vintage has only just abated, but four months before the next en primeur campaign kicks off, 2010 is...
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Which wine region could you live without?
Jancis Robinson MW My esteemed colleague, Jancis Robinson MW, recently published an interesting article on her website about the expanding world of wine. She referred to a number of eyebrow-raising...
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The rebirth of Lebanese wine
A five hour flight to Lebanon coupled with a lengthy, fog-bound delay at Heathrow is a good time to do some reading about this most complex of Middle Eastern countries....
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