Natural, organic, biodynamic, real wine and the people and places behind them

Why are you not tasting what I am tasting? (I ask silently) Why are you making undue allowances for a wine that is plainly not interesting? To me! Every rhetorical…

Sclavos Tsausi, Cephalonia, Greece The Sclavos family traces its roots back for centuries in Cephalonia. A branch of the family emigrated in 1700 to the Black Sea port of Odessa…

A magnificent six ride again   Italy was known as Enotria Tellus, the land of vines. Metternich said that Italy was “a geographical expression.” From the Alpine valleys of Valle…

What sort of wines make me think, 'yes, I am now on holiday'? I am nothing if not predictable. My holidays are always spent in the same cottage in the…

  The Beck winery is a family estate in Gols, in northern Burgenland near lake Neusiedl. Traditionally, there were small mixed farms in the area, but they always grew vines…

I always subscribed to the notion that low/no sulphur wines would be more invigorating, more digestible than more conventional added-sulphite wines. Despite this romantic feeling, I always reserved a portion…

The dog’s bellottis   Stefano Bellotti understood farming and the language of nature at a fundamental level. He made wines that were wild, long-lived and spoke deeply of their origins.…

A Georgian supra is so much more than eating and drinking. It is a form of nourishment for the soul, an affirmation of the civilising effect of the meal taken…

  One of the terms that wine professionals frequently “deploy” in conversation amongst one another is terroir, although it can also be used when referring to food or the rootedness…

In "From Russia with Love," James Bond famously comments, "Red wine with fish? Well, that should have told me something”. That should tell us something of the old-fashioned preconceptions regarding…