Doug Decants: Valtellina, a Trio of West Aussies, and Sherry

by blog on September 29, 2016

NEW WINES Les Chiavs de Pyrene have moved into Valtellina Balgera is a boutique winery located in Chiuro, one of the wine growing villages of Valtellina area, in the region of Lombardy. The winery dates back to 1885 and Paolo Balgera is the 4th generation wine maker. The classic old world styled highly fragrant Valtellina wines […]

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Artisans of Oz: a round up

by blog on September 27, 2016

And so to the land of Bansky murals, and enough hipsters and bearded baristas to make AA Gill expel the plums moulded to his mouth and break out in hives. For we were in Cargo, a nightclub and pogonophobe’s vision of hell by night and a temporary venue for the Artisans of Australia by day, […]

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Drinking Wine, Not Ideology

September 26, 2016

Simon Woolf’s piece on natural wine in Meininger caused another minor kerfuffle in a carafe in the oenosphere. These articles are always timely in that even though they are written with diligence and fair-handedness, the reactions they subsequently evoke provide an indication about the commentariat’s (lack of) knowledge, understanding and experience of natural wines. Defenders of […]

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Tasting No-Notes

September 22, 2016

I stopped writing tasting notes years ago – not sure whether it was out of laziness or ennui, or whether it suddenly simply seemed trite to reduce a wine to the skeletal components of colour, primary smell and a ten-second-sip, and thereafter raid the alms-basket of language to uncover rare fruits – limes, lemons– but, […]

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When the Wine Tastes You

September 20, 2016

What are the most important factors that affect the way you taste wine? Is it the inherent quality of the wine itself and its potential to communicate itself lucidly? Do your expectations condition how you taste; are you a label junkie? Or is that any fine wine may be thoroughly muted by being served in […]

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Wine and The Golden Rule of Business

September 16, 2016

It’s not just dog eat dog. It’s dog doesn’t return other dog’s phone calls. (Woody Allen) Morals? Can’t afford them guv’nor. (Alfred Doolittle, Pygmalion – George Bernard Shaw) Those are my principles and if you don’t like them I have others. (Marx, Groucho) I was musing the other day how there is often a disjunction […]

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A Treading of Grapes

September 13, 2016

For all our friends in the northern hemisphere who are gathering grapes in vineyards or toiling in their cellars… The Vine – ‘Cometh the full grape cluster on the vine. The rain falleth. Clusters thicken, purple they are as bruises, as thunder, yet each grape containeth within itself a measure of joy and dancing, the […]

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Upcoming Tastings: September/October 2016

September 8, 2016

Sherry Amour – Trade tasting Date:  Monday 12th September 2016 Time:  10.30am – 5.00pm Venue:  OXO2, Bargehouse Street, London, SE1 9PH Catch up with Les Cavistes on table 17 where we will be pouring wines from Emlio Hidalgo (Jerez); Bodega Sanchez Ayala (Sanlucar) and Cesar Florido (Chipiona). Everything from Palo Cortado to PX, from fresh […]

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Coming soon…Another Occhipinti – no, Andrea Occhipinti

September 8, 2016

This estate is based on the slopes surrounding the Volcanic lake of Bolsena; the region is part of Maremma (called “Tuscia” in Lazio), about 15 minutes’ drive from the Tuscan border, a spectacular terroir known for the infamous “Est Est Est” white, now fortunately making something rather more palatable now… Andrea works essentially with Aleatico […]

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Six September Recommendations

September 7, 2016

September, officially the beginning of autumn… Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the  Stooks arise  Around; up above, what wind-walks! what  lovely behaviour  Of silk-sack clouds! Has wilder, willful-waiver  Meal-drift molded ever and melted across skies? -Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hurrahing in Harvest … is really a further episode in our increasingly lengthy summers (touch wood). […]

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