Natural, organic, biodynamic, real wine and the people and places behind them

Reasonably bright and fairly early, the Les Caves road crew piled on board the bus to zig towards Vienna and to zag where the Graz was greener on t’other side…

Matassa Cuvée Alexandria from Tom Lubbe, a true beauty of a flaming sunset of a desert island wine. From the Muscat of Alexandria, a synonym of which is Tottenham Park Muscat.…

Throughout The Real Wine Fair, we will be holding a series of seminars & masterclasses from several guest speakers. Due to their popularity in previous years, spaces will be allocated…

Paarl - Pink, Pretty In Paarl – Comes before wines in South Africa. Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh – A quasi-masonic ritual observed in Gascon restaurants whereby you will only be able…

Nacarat to Numerology   Nacarat – Bright orange-red colour, useful to have for tasting notes and the name of an occasional wine from Claude Courtois. Nagyburgundi – Hungarian synonym for…

I’ve argued on these pages and elsewhere that it is trite to bandy loaded terms such as “natural”, “conventional” and “movement” willy-nilly as in “natural wine movement” and to have…

Oregon Ovum Wines: Back to the Egg Ever till now When men were fond I smiled and wondered how. --Angelo, Measure for Measure Perceived as a truly noble grape that…

Every time I am invited on a tasting panel I vow that it will be my last foray into the world of jangling and wrangling. Although this vow will doubtless…

Last week we uncorked a few bottles in the basement of Terroirs and put together a rough tasting called New & Recent Releases. As the clunky title suggests this was…

Vale da Capucha Branco:  Composed of 92% Fernão Pires (which is not a cross of Fernando Torres and Robert Pires) and 8% Arinto, hails from Atlantic country in Lisboa, a…

Smart-Allocation Wines “Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist.” Thomas Carlyle When demand starts to exceed supply in any walk of life the value…

Throw another turkey on the barbie, pin back thy lugs ye figjams and mollydookers cos we’re stoked to announce some serious new true blue grog as we swiftly decant our…

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…