In a recent tasting note I said I bloody hate Grenache-based wines – they are normally too heavy, boozy and hard work. Given this, my excellent chum Lance Foyster, a wine merchant I’ve known for 20 years, decided to send me this bottle of 14.5% Grenache. I can only imagine he did this to continue [...]
I’ve never really got on with wines from Domaine Courbis, so when I suddenly found myself standing in front of the wine fridge, out of the blue, holding this bottle I not only pondered how I got there, but I was veritably vexed how it had infiltrated my sancto sanctorum. It cannot have been left [...]
As this note appears online I will be heading into London for Clark Foyster’s 2011 Burgundy en primeur tasting – this the most desirable event of the Burgundy tasting calendar. I will wear loud clothing and sample hilariously fine wines whilst rubbing my belly with mirth. The jocularity of the event should prevent the ‘going [...]
Nuits should not be like this. No Nuits I really like, be it Mugnier, Chevillon or a one off from Dujac, is anything like this in personality. I think this was the first vintage made by de Montille from vines they got from Dujac (correct me if I’m wrong, Jeremy) and if the comparison is [...]
Some may recall, on my post about natural wine, a brief discussion with Fabio of Vinos Ambiz in which he agreed to send me a bottle of his wine as long as I was brutally honest about it. This post is the culmination of that bargain. I agreed to be honest, Fabio, and I most [...]
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Germany Unplugged tasting; an event featuring up-and-coming producers of largely dry and red wines. Much to my intense annoyance, I loved it and had a whale of a time. I’d planned loads of brilliant jokes like ‘the most loathsome collection of Germans assembled since the Nuremberg [...]
I visited the Specialist Importers Trade Tasting (SITT) a few days ago. It was a large event with far too many wines on show to taste the lot, but a lovely Gevrey-Chambertin from Domaine Henri Jouan really stood out as being marvellous. Henri-Jouan is a new domaine to me. He is based in Morey-Saint-Denis and [...]
Sometimes you fancy something different, happens to us all, and so you shop outside your normal parameters. Of course, this is a path fraught with danger and the peril of heinous suffering. We all do it anyway. The Albarino was the only white wine, beyond Sherry, I have found I could reliably manage to tolerate [...]
I’ll come clean, when I find that a Riesling has low alcohol and is bottled with a bit of residual sugar I am a real sucker for it. I buy a bottle enthusiastically and hope it’ll deliver even a small fraction of the thrilling, nervy tension of wines made in the home of this style, [...]
How many times have you heard people braying with irritating smugness about all the wonderful cheap wine they have picked up in French supermarkets? Endlessly, I’ll wager. Well next time you hear some smug arse prattling out this tosh I strongly suggest you make it abundantly clear you could think of few experiences as dreary [...]
View my Facebook profile