Author: blog

  Andrea Occhipinti fell in love with the vineyards of Gradoli while he was at the Agrarian University of Tuscia, so much so that they became the subject of his…

The other day I was given a wine blind and asked to guess what it was. I wasn’t getting anything. It was neutral with a short finish and all I…

The other day, at a nameless restaurant in a nameless place, three colleagues and I drank a large number of nameless conventionally-made “classic” wines. When I say drank, I mean…

With torrential rain throughout the last couple of months, it is only fair that we report on a flood of new and recent arrivals. These are but a small proportion…

I have had a huge soft spot for Jurançon since I first encountered a dry version of the wine in a restaurant in Marylebone in the early 1990s. Our company…

Certain grape varieties, like football teams, engender strong supportive feelings in individuals. Perhaps, they enjoy an exalted reputation as a noble variety and accrue a mythology around themselves. We hear…

Appellations and pear-shaped thinking We work with the wines of Frantz Saumon (he’s a former lumberjack and he’s okay), a vigneron who makes most excellent wines from either old vines…

In his 1971 book “The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge” influential environmental activist Wendell Berry, emphasizing the desirability of preserving natural areas and adapting a long-range…

The new Alsatian’s Natural Creed stateth that farming should be biodynamic and that winemaking boundaries can - and should be – pushed to the maximum minimal. It is not just…