Chatting with: Bronwen Percival of Neal’s Yard Dairy
Bronwen Percival is one of the UK's leading cheese experts. She is Neal's Yard Dairy's buyer and technical manager. She also co-authored, with her husband Francis, the book "Reinventing The…
Wine Controversies: Wine Faults versus Wine Flaws
Statement: There are discernible wine faults, there are also legitimate wine flaws. Wine cleanliness is wine godliness. This notion of the paramount important of cleanness in winemaking is inculcated at…
Wine Controversies: Do Cheap Wines Need to Exist?
Statement: Received commercial wisdom would have us believe that cheap wines are necessary to bring new consumers into the wine-buying market. The argument goes that it is patronising to tell…
Natural Wine Thoughts via Georgia
The other day I was hosting a masterclass on orange wines and opted to commence proceedings with my favourite Niels Bohr quote to the effect that “If quantum mechanics hasn't…
Wine Labelling: The Argument in a Nutshell – Part Two
Continued from Part One... There ain’t no sanity clause? One of the problems with charters is the administrative burden that they levy on individuals. If they are to be worth…
Wine Labelling: The Argument in a Nutshell – Part One
The hoary chestnut roasting on today’s open fire is the thorny thicket of labelling. Part of me fantasises about serving the überinterventionist winemaker with the lengthiest of self-inflicted writs –that…
Doug decants: The Wines of Andreas Tscheppe
Of Dragonflies, Stagbeetles, Salamanders and Butterflies Andreas Tscheppe is part of the Styrian quintet of vignerons called Schmeck das Leben (taste of life). He has small vineyard parcels in a…
Doug Decants: Bruno Duchêne’s La Luna
One of our “fauve-rite” summer reds Bruno Duchêne hails from the Loire Valley, where his family had a thriving business selling farm machinery. Before starting his career as a winemaker, he…
A Trip to Georgia: Day 3
Of chacha at the gallop, Crazy Pomegranate=crazy-good food, old Rkat and new pet nat. They say in Sighnaghi that if you drink wine and chacha all night long you start…
A Trip to Georgia: Day Two
Of healing cheese, #skintouch, bonny Saperavi, a qvevri academy and super Supra. "Truth is not found in other people's grapes. You can't call that your wine. Truth is in growing…
A Trip to Georgia: Day One
Two semi-supras, twenty-one score and five grape varieties, the other Iberian coffee, dodgy spice dealing and trying not to fall in qvevris After an overnight flight you’re bound to hit…
Tutti i Giorni: Three light Italian reds for every day glugging
We experienced a tantalising flicker of high summer the other day, the kind of weather that moves the great British populace to invoke the inalienable peasant rite of “pulling a…
Doug decants: Franck Balthazar, Cornas
Illustrious Hermitage is spoken with a regal drawl, all languorous and timeless, Cote-Rotie, with its pleasing assonance and alliteration, trips authoritatively off the tongue, then there is Cornas. Not Corn-ah,…
#thebeastfromtheyeast and other cringeworthy wine hashtags
“…A man who could make so vile a pun would not scruple to pick a pocket.” Gutenhashtag! Und #nichtsehrgutenhashtag! Only Donald Trump could make twitter synonymous with acute logorrhoea. Here…
Doug decants: The Wines of Philippe Bornard
Philippe Bornard lives in the village of Pupillin near Arbois. His vineyards were inherited from his father, who previously sold only to co-ops. It was Pierre Overnoy, no less, who…
Pretty in Pink: Part 2 (The Rest of the World)
And so we continue on our Rosé journey with some utterly delicious pinks… Was it Mariah Carey in We Belong Together (remix) (feat. Jadakiss and Sty) who extolled the great…
Pretty in Pink: Part 1 (The Frenchies)
We’ve probably endured enough whimsical articles about “la vie en rosé” and how we should be “tickled pink” by surprisingly drinkable rosé wines, but that’s not going to stop this…
Wine Wabi-Sabi
There are two broadly opposed approaches to farming and winemaking that illustrate the personal aesthetic of those people who are involved in the process. One is to see farming and…
Doug Decants: The Auvergnate Wines of Domaine Maupertuis
Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same. --Blaise Pascal (born in Clermont-Ferrand) Jean Maupertuis tends 3.8 hectares of…
How To Be A Buyer
Wine buyers fall into various categories. There are the buyers for investment purposes, wherein the wine is already a commodity with a burnished reputation. (The market has already ascribed a…
Doug Decants: Momento Mori Staring at the Sun
New Zealander Dane Johns (who staged with the great Bill Downie) worked many years as a barista in Melbourne where he learned about roasting and the nuances of blending and…
Women in wine
This year we’ve seen some proper celebration of women in wine. There have been pop-up events, a BYO podcast, due acknowledgement on wine lists, and articles in the wine press,…
How Do You Like Them Appellations?
Not a lot! We recently received communication from our friends at Il Paradiso di Manfredi in Montalcino. Another example of appellations falling a long way from the tree of sanity: On…
The First Wine Cuckoo of Spring
The cuckoo in Wordsworth’s poem heralds the coming of spring, and whilst the cuckoo chants her merry song, one may also discern a more discordant vernal sound – that of…
Spotlight on: Te Whare Ra, Marlborough New Zealand
TWR - The Faré Side Te Whare Ra (TWR), pronounced Te Faré Rha (House of the Sun), is the oldest little winery & vineyard in Marlborough, being first established in…
Doug decants: Lovamor, Alfredo Maestro
Quoth the wine drinker… Lovamor! Do we love Albillo? Or what? It appears both fruitily in Nicolas Marcos’ La Fanfarria Blanco alongside Albarin (one Cangas wine you will never rue),…
Some wine regions are born, some achieve greatness…
Having clocked up five hundred plus blogs, I sometimes feel that I have exhausted wine subjects to write about. Requiring inspiration, I consequently trawl social media in search of provocative…
Les Caves de Key Kegs
Key Kegs have been around for some time as a means of dispensing wine, but arguably have only really taken off in the UK in the past three to four…
Terroir matters
I was weaned on James Frazer. 'The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply…
30 years of Fatalone Primitivo Riserva: A Report
The History of Fatalone The Fatalone name originated with Filippo Petrera (2nd generation), Nicola’s son, who was, in his time, nicknamed Il Fatalone. It quickly caught on becoming the family…
Doug decants: The Wines of François Rousset-Martin, Jura
Some growers seem to be born iconic, some have iconic status thrust upon them and some seem to avoid the limelight entirely, simply content to sell their wines. It helps…
Natural Wine Philosophy: Non-Philosophical Musings
What is your personal philosophy, Lucy asks Charlie Brown. He thinks for a moment: 'Life is like an ice cream cone – you have to lick it one day at…
The Stirrings of a UK Wine Culture
Are you curious to know if there a disjunction between London and the rest of the UK in terms of wine taste? Although I am mainly interested in regional attitudes…
Wines of The Sea – The Life of Brine
Wine lists are organised by price, by country/region, by grape variety and in the broadest sense, by style or flavour profile. But when one thinks that wines come from particular…
Doug decants: Judith Beck Welschriesling Bambule!
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 as…
New Arrivals: From Oregon to Croatia, Marlborough to Burgenland!
Oregon trailers Ovum’s Off The Grid Riesling has just rejoined our supply to power your electrifying Riesling needs. Since I Fell For You Gewurz is the latest Traminer to fall…
Ficheing for information
We want information, information, information --The Prisoner There is no substitute for standing in a vineyard and shaking the clay from the soles of your shoes. To share the same…
Doug decants: Franz Weninger Vom Kalk, Burgenland Austria
Just as each wine grower is a unique individual, so too are their vineyards. Franz Weninger insists on expressing the different soil types found throughout Burgenland and uses Blaufrankisch as…
The wine in Strine stays mainly off the plain
The reverse convict boat from Australia docked recently with some convincing grog from our alternative and alliterative artisans. Pat Sullivan has sent us one of his indeterminate gluggers: Jumpin Juice, a…
Dare To Be Different
Original grapes, traditional styles, quirky stories, oddities, curiosities, accidents and a fanatical urge to push the envelope. Mauvais Temps, Nicolas Carmarans, Aveyron A last chance to try the native Negret…
What’s (not) in your wine?
It is symptomatic of the world we live in that we obsess about the niceties of labelling rather than talk about the quality of the contents of a bottle of…
Doug Decants: Vale da Capucha Arinto
The Marques family and their estate, Vale da Capucha, represent the viticultural renaissance that the Lisboa DO has experienced over the last decade. Having grown fruit for bulk wine production…
The Cavistes’s Wet January
Decanting our wines of last month * Our first soggy plump comes from the parish of Mr Board, who proffers Kolbroek Syrah Intellego as his wine dish of the day…
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…
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