A Bag Of Tricks
by Margaret Rand
You can always rely on Olivier Bernard for a good quote. Olivier is the chatelain of Domaine de Chevalier, on which you can always rely for a good wine, and...
Country: United States
2019 The Society's Exhibition Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, California
( £14.95, 13.5%, The Wine Society )We Pinot Noir lovers are always looking for great value examples of our favourite red grape, but I think it’s fair to say that we don’t often find them in California. That’s what makes this example from Schug Cellars in the sprawling Sonoma Coast appellation such an exciting discovery. Bright, spicy and enticingly perfumed, with a hint of oak, red cherry and wild strawberry fruit, tangy acidity and textured, fine-grained tannins.
The Best Wine Books of 2021
by Henry Jeffreys
How do you write a wine book that appeals to the general reader? All the stuff about schist, clones and yields that make up a good part of wine writing...
The Great Exchange
by Farrah Berrou
The poet and sommelier Amanda Smeltz once wrote about how geography – whether you’re based in a small town or in a teeming metropolis – determines which wines you can...
Facing The Fires
by Christy Canterbury MW
During Napa’s intense “fire season” last year, I wondered what locals have been doing about this menace since 2017. Napa is a moneyed wine region. Surely it has the funds...
The Wisdom Of Age
by Tim Atkin
Call it serendipity, call it fate, but there are times when events and conversations seem to align. You go for months without thinking about something and then it’s everywhere, filling...
Survivor Vines
by Stacy Briscoe
Navigating St. Helena Road on my way to a vineyard tour, I suddenly feel a quivering sense of fear. It’s not because the narrow, winding route has me gazing over...
Wine Hands
by Clare Tooley MW
“Take my hand, tenez, trust me, leap, I won’t let go.” A favourite memory in rain-soaked Chablis, flood waters rising, taking a supplier’s outstretched hand as his courtyard began to...
In Vino Duplicitas: The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire
by Tim Atkin
At 5pm on the 25thof April 2008, Peter Hellman received a phone call from Geoffrey Troy of New York Wine Warehouse. The wine merchant had heard that “something unusual” was...
The US Wine Apocalypse: It Could Still Happen
by Christy Canterbury MW
“Excellent!”, tweeted Donald J. Trump. That is all that it took for many in the US wine business to begin spewing soundbites like, “Disaster Averted” and “Panic Over”. Such nonsensical...
The Taste of Smoke
by Harry Eyres
I write in a time of ashes. Not only have certain political dreams and projects recently gone up in smoke; the destructive fires have been raging more literally, all across...
White wine rising
by Christy Canterbury MW
Though the “ABC”, or “Anything But Chardonnay” campaign continues to rail against it, Chardonnay remains the favourite white grape of USA wine drinkers. It is also the planet’s most planted,...