I’m a big fan of Faugères – and if asked to describe the character of the wines from this small but over-achieving Languedoc appelation, I’d probably use words like “muscular”, “spicy” and “intense” – but also “elegant” and “structured”. However, tasting Brigitte Chevalier’s Domaine de Cébène cuvées had me frantically recalibrating. Brigitte’s terroir is at the North-Eastern [...]
Eulogising about Etna
Following a hugely inspiring trip to Sicily’s Mount Etna region back in September, here are links to a couple of articles that I wrote on the subject: Exploding onto the Scene: Realising the potential of Etna wines When Ciro Biondi announced that he was going to abandon his career as an architect, in order to revive the [...]
Oh Balls! (Or how customer service saved the day)
Picture the scene – four old friends, and we’ve just passed a convivial evening in a restaurant. It’s Thursday night, 9.30pm, no-one’s ready to go home but at the same time a change of scenery is called for. Oh yes, and we’d like good wine please. The trouble is, we’re in Victoria. A quick look on [...]
Feeling (Green and) Blue
You don’t expect to end up on the dance floor with the proprietor at the end of a wine tasting, but that’s what happened at last Sunday’s wine and music matching event at Green and Blue. The concept seemed simple enough – six wines to be tasted, each one with a specific piece of music [...]
Down and Dirty – thoughts on the 2012 dirty dozen tasting
The UK may be one of the toughest, most price conscious wine retail markets in the world, yet somewhat miraculously the independent and on-trade sectors are developing a real love of the small, the quirky and the characterful. Exhibit A: The Dirty Dozen is a conglomerate of twelve passionate and free spirited UK wine importers, [...]
Fulvio Bressan – Taking the long-term view
Winemaking has developed significantly in the last few decades. Winemakers now routinely draw on a vast canon of research, learning and technology to help ensure that they produce consistent wines and harvest fruit in prime condition, year in, year out. Vintage variation, of the sort that wrote off most early 90′s Bordeaux, is almost a [...]
The veritas crudo of prosciutto
I rarely write about food on this blog – that’s not due to a lack of interest, but rather just a matter of focus – this is a wine blog, after all. But following a recent trip to San Daniele di Friuli, to sample wines and enjoy the famed local prosciutto, I felt compelled to [...]
The wines of Alto Adige, in tweets
Technology can be a double-edged sword. Always-on internet and social media allow us to network and broadcast as never before, but that immediacy can sometimes be problematic. At last year’s European Wine Bloggers Conference, the organisers went to great pains to ensure that we delegates had a near-constant wifi connection, enabling us to blog, tweet, [...]
Market Row Wines – no more Gallo’s Creek for Brixton!
It could be seen as a sign of encroaching gentrification: as of May 2012, Brixton has its first ever independent wine shop, Market Row Wines. I don’t see it that way – sure, Brixton may be changing, but the regeneration of the covered markets (originally kicked off by the flawed but brilliantly successful spacemakers project) has [...]
Raw, real or just natural? (Reflections on the Raw and real wine fairs of May 2012)
So, London is sitting back and relaxing (baking in a heatwave no less), after possibly one of the busiest weeks in the annual wine calendar – ever. We had two “natural” wine fairs running back to back, and merging seamlessly into the four day London International Wine Fair (which I didn’t attend). I’ve been trying [...]