Yearly Archives: 2015

Label – Luxury Cuvée Label - Never judge a label by its wine. Labels – Did you know that the text on all wine back labels is written by the…

Whilst we do many small and varied tastings for the trade it’s so important to connect properly with the public and tell the real stories about the wines. Whilst Les…

I have just done my last two wine events for the year which involved a mixture of singing for the suppers of others and riding various hobbyhorses in many directions.…

Jeff Vejr is the owner/winemaker of Golden Cluster.  He sources grapes from one of the oldest vineyards in Oregon.  His Semillon grapes are the oldest known in the Pacific Northwest. Read Part One…

What’s the Austrian weather like, Ollie? It’s raining! Cats and dogs and strudel! Just returned from a week’s buying trip to Austria, a quick zip from Wachau to Styria via…

Who is Les Caves de Pyrène No, Hu is the leader of China No – it only works as a homophone Who are you calling a homophone? No, Hu is…

  Sometimes in our lives we are fortunate to make something without there having to be a reason, a single thought that leads inexorably to action. Rather, as in every…

Picture a vineyard... We stop by the head of a path, walk through a gate and promenade through woods of pine, eucalyptus and local trees until the woods became bushes,…

Hammurabi - Hype Hammurabi – Ancient king of Babylonia and not an embryonic Basque grape variety Hand – positive – Hand harvested (which is selected by eye) implying an artisan,…

Gaillac to Gyropalette Gaillac - One of the first vinicultural centres of ancient Gaul with strong traditions and a spread of traditional grapes. Red wines, whites, vins jaunes, slightly sparkling, off…

Gareth Belton makes wine under his label, Gentle Folk Wines, in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. Les Caves bring Gentle Folk's white Field Blend and Little One Petit Verdot into the UK.…

Earthy to Extraction Earthy - refers to a wine displaying characteristics which are less obviously fruit-driven and more to do with flavours of the soil. Wines from the South West…

Would you give us a potted autobiography? I started as pot wash at 15 in a North Yorkshire fine dining restaurant, then did a stint as a waiter in a…

Dame to Dung Dame - “The last time that I trusted a dame was in Paris in 1940. She was going out to get a bottle of wine. Two hours…

A little bit of Jekyll, a little bit of Hyde – Rory Gallagher I can’t second guess the intention of an amorphous group of critics and commentators any more than they…

Rather than spending their lives defending nomenclature, delving into semantic nuances and untangling gossamer philosophical niceties, natural wine drinkers – copains & copines alike - drink wine. Which seems the…

When I first became interested in wine I was instructed to taste in a certain way, to break wine down into its constituent parts and to assess analytically (and dismissively).…

“The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order.”…

Looking at the glass-twitchers, sniffers and slurpers at a recent Les Caves de Pyrene tasting made me think that tasting is as much about mood as anything. The more generic…

A revolutionary wine survey about wine surveys has once again exposed the vast chasm in our knowledge about the drinking habits of Joe and Joanna public and thereby pointed out…

Nature may be a pretty lass, but she is also pretty scruffy. Here are some delightful beauty tips brought to you by the those caring folks at the Laboratory of…

Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence. --John Lahr Just as dementors feed naturally…

Burgenland lies around 35 minutes’ drive south east of Vienna and is divided into three broad regions: Neusiedlersee, Leithaberg and Mittelburgenland. We spent most of our trip in the former…

Andrew Jefford once announced at a European blogger’s conference that the wine writer is dead. We weren’t aware that he had been ill, but as the last typewriter rolled off…

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even…

This post first appeared on The Wine Idealist blog. View the original HERE. A few years ago the vigneron-group Natural Selection Theory (NST), comprising three growers, submitted a wine called NST Project Egg…

Reposted from July 2014 Read Part One HERE PEEP JARGON Consultants of swing? Bespoke Service, or “service” as it should be called, is offered by consultants to differentiate their efforts…

The Nature of Wine Tasting Many dozens of books have fully explored the mechanics of taste, its fixities and definites, and there are numerous systems to codify or judge these.…

Phile under Pinot I’m sure Pinot’s musky quality directly stimulates the part of the brain that processes sensuality yet I’ve had more unfulfilling encounters with this grape than I care…

Originally posted April 2013 Of pointyheads, pulse-quickeners & phoeno-types Compare this, rank that, analyse to the nth degree – the more you reduce wine to numbers the less you understand…

“I had that Bertrand Russell in the back of my cab once. So I asked him, “Well, Mr Russell, what’s it all about?” And do you know – he couldn’t…

“I am a possibilist. I believe that humanity is master of its own fate… Before we can change direction, we have to question many of the assumptions underlying our current…

 At the beginning of each year I don an oenomancer’s spangly pointed hat, decant a colfondo Prosecco, examine the true lies of its wiggly wine sediment, sniff the prevailing wine…

 Retreat, Australians Fair In October 2014 we were delighted to welcome three of our Australian growers – Anton von Klopper, Tom Shobbrook and Pat Sullivan – who embarked on two…