Tastes change
The other day I was trying a wine called In Côt We Trust from the stable of Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme. I remember (back in the time) my first encounter with this…
New Wine Resolutions: Refresh your palates and wine lists
We're nearly a month out from the holidays, and it’s time to refresh your palates and your wine lists. Ignore dry January for try-new-wine-January (or February or March) instead because, when…
Doug Decants: Piquentum Wines
This is a tale of a son of a Frenchwoman and an Istrian father, growing native Croatian grapes and making them in an old Mussolini-era concrete water tank. Born in…
Keep on Punching: The Rise of Testalonga Wines
Our first batch of 2017s have arrived and the Testalonga wines have gone to another level. Craig Hawkins is in a good place. He and Carla are now ensconced in…
Wine is Politics: Part Two
Continued from Part One... DOC, heal thyself - globalisation versus the grower In France and Italy the official structures (appellations, interprofessional bodies, bureaucratic involvement) have been seen to militate…
Doug Decants: Filippi Wines
Soave is normally not sophisticated. At worst it may be a sulphurous travesty and even the better examples tend to be neutrality personified with all the fruit of the thinnest…
2017: The Year of Treading Softly
A Swift Retrospective It was not the best of times, it was not nearly the worst of times, despite the fact that a sociopathic orange person was wreaking daily fresh…
In 2018 I predict…a quiet riot
There is a saying that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. Trends, by definition, are rootless and transient, yet wine commentators are often falling over…