Had an email last year from Tara Devon O’Leary, aka The Wine Passionista. ‘I am looking for your personal experience of the one wine you tasted in 2010 that remains on your mind for how it surprised, impressed, stirred or impacted you.’ Tara’s from London but has lived in various […]
Recommendation
Spent Monday sifting through some wines for my regular Square Meal Lifestyle column. The next issue, looking at Australian Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Grüner Veltliner, Oloroso and southern Rhône reds, is out some time in Autumn. I already had the Rieslings lined up, but I needed to do some tasting in […]
The Rhône, Cab Franc, GrüVe and Oloroso
Some people have been in touch since I transferred the blog to the new site saying that while they liked the content, there weren’t enough pictures. So here’s a picture to keep them happy. Yes, I know, it’s a picture of a piece of carpet, what’s that got to do […]
The Stains Massive
It’s 2 in the morning and I’m still up. Why? Partly because I’ve had a great and stimulating day. It began with a talk from a Kiwi called Bob Franklyn that touched on many things, but that gave major prods about what it means to be community. Now whether we […]
Domaine Saparale & Leonard Cohen
I’ve tended not to like cheap New Zealand Bordeaux-inspired reds – scrawny and charmless and with overenthusiastic oak-ageing. A bit like cheap Bordeaux, really, although perhaps not the oak thing. The good news is that the Kiwis seem to have realised that such wines aren’t their forte, and have virtually […]
Villa Maria Private Bin Merlot 2006
Don’t know why, but on one of the chilliest weekends in recent years, we’ve by-passed red wines and been sipping and supping white wines, all from southern France. It’s a vast and varied region, and as with the reds, trying to pigeon-hole them under one banner is somewhat difficult. But […]