The latest instalment of Hannah’s adventures in the Ardeche finds her developing a strange relationship with a pneumatic press. And realising that the hardest work at harvest was not in the vineyard, after all.
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Auberge de Chassignolles, my Hotel California in the Auvergne
Hannah’s further adventures off the beaten-track in South-Eastern France, as she’s abandoned in a hot, sticky Ardeche but reminisces about the perfect lunch
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How I ended up living in Andrea Calek’s barn by mistake
Hannah continues her adventures in France, trading in a winemaking apprenticeship in Banyuls for Andrea Calek’s estate in the Ardèche.
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Hashtag unicorn wines
Hannah rails against the dislikeable trend of bragging about #unicorn wines on social media
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Disco lights and grower champs: Amsterdam’s natural wine bars
Hannah bids a not quite tearful goodbye to Amsterdam, with a round up of its burgeoning natural wine bar scene.
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How natural wine killed the tasting note
Has natural wine killed the tasting note? An army of internet warriors wants us to believe it is so!
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Natural wine, acid punk and all that jazz
In November The Guardian published an 1800-odd word article about natural wine of which approximately zero said anything new. Not that it had to. A piece called “The cult of natural wine – ‘this is like punk or acid house’” was bound to rip through the Internet like wild fire, breaking news or none.
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¡Ay caramba! Mexican vin de soif from Bichi Wines
One week of drinking (soy) milk with dinner and one day after I saw the bottle of bourbon-barrel Mondavi in the fridge, it was time to get the hell out of what – if you’re the volatile lookin’, gun n’ cuffs n’ taser totin’ border control officer handling my passport – I’ll call “home for the
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Six Georgian wines to get you through Christmas
Christmas means different things to everyone but to me it means dodging career talks and getting new pyjamas. It doesn’t stop there – There is much, much more not to like. To pick but a few from the Grinch’s hat: Rampant commercialism, Christmas music, Christmas TV, Christmas hats, him and her and ‘for the cooks in
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A toast to the Georgian harvest
I’d like to propose a toast to the Georgian grape harvest. To Georgia’s ancient ladies and their pirate knives and three-legged stools, their hair in scarves to deflect the burrs I still find in my socks. To a total lack of mechanisation, organisation and weather stations; and to zero early starts. To Ramaz’s family