The Truth About Myths
by Sara Danese
Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese don’t mix Bordeaux with Coke. Yet, between November 2017 and September 2018, I lost count of how many times I was told this, along...
Country: United States
Reasons To Be Cheerful
by Andy Neather
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...
The Appeal Of Youth
by Margaret Rand
Of the many irritating things my parents used to say on repeat, the one that springs most to mind now is ‘youth is wasted on the young’. (A close second...
Is Wine’s Future Doomed?
by Andy Neather
Last week on the eve of my 19 year-old daughter’s departure for university, the last of our three children to leave, we shared wine over Korean barbecue. To hear some...
A Wine Time Capsule
by Charlie Leary
In October 1972, New York magazine published a special issue on wine called the “Whole Grape Catalogue.” Noting that “the past few months have seen enormous growth in the New...
Rethinking Fine Wine
by Tim Atkin
It was a noble, if ultimately inconclusive exercise. Maybe that’s true of anything that involves an indigestible dose of subjectivity. But you can’t fault Areni Global for attempting to define...
Wine After Dry January
by Andy Neather
Dry January is over, for those quixotic enough to try it – but the shiver it provokes in the French wine industry continues. Ever since the battle over the first...
On Marginality
by Charlie Leary
In the early 1990s, I tried growing wine grapes in Louisiana, near the Mississippi border. As I recall, Ruby Cabernet, the cross developed in 1936, was among the selected varieties....
The Curse Of Bordeaux
by Andy Neather
We splashed in the Saint Emilion lavoir, desperate to cool off on a 39-degree day in August. Yet this wasn’t when the weirdness of this broiling year really hit me....
What Are Americans Drinking?
by Farrah Berrou
For close to a year, I’ve been working as the self-proclaimed Ancient World specialist in a wine shop. In the process of spitting samples into a sink with various salesmen,...
2019 Angeline Vineyards Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, California
( £19.99, 13.8%, Aitken Wines, Askew Wines, Cheers Wine Merchants, Flagship Wines, Framlington Wines, Harris Wines, New Forest Wines, Seven Cellars, St Andrews Wines, Stroud Wines )It’s rare to find really good Californian Pinot Noir under £20 a bottle, especially if it comes from the ultra-trendy Russian River area. This is elegant, precise and very lightly oaked, with aromas of fennel and sweet baking spices, a palate of wild strawberry and goji berries, silky tannins and the supporting acidity that you’d expect from a region with cool Pacific influence. Fantastic value.
The Warrior Mentality
by Clare Tooley MW
I have worked my entire life for restless warriors. First in a bohemian penthouse studio in Notting Hill, then in the stubborn landscape of Bordeaux, and now in the velvet-textured...