Carignan the Barbarian
December 13, 2011
The Trailer (1982) For centuries, the gentle giant wandered carefree amongst the foothills and the mountains of Southern France. But, not so long ago, his strong character became too much for some to bear, and he found himself out of favour with the locals. Unloved and unwanted, he had to hide himself amongst his more charismatic neighbours. But Carignan didn’t care. He believed that, once he was…
Yes, THAT Lebanon
December 6, 2011
Some countries are on the fringes of wine production, and Lebanon is certainly one of them. Most wine drinkers I speak to aren’t aware this country even makes wine, but they’ve been doing it for 9000 years. Solidly in the ‘Old World’ camp, then; but many of the wines are defiantly modern in style. Lebanon is a small country (200 miles long and 50 miles across) situated at the eastern edge of the…
Why there has never been a better time to get into wine – or Does Decanter magazine make you blush?
December 1, 2011
There was one magazine above all that I found embarrassing to buy as a student. I used to surreptitiously snatch it from the newsstand and guiltily stuff it into a brown paper bag at the till, in the hope that no-one would see. No, not Playboy; it was Decanter. Now I casually read wine magazines on the tube at rush hour. How times have changed. That the UK is not historically a wine-producing…
Wine Drinking No. 2: Biodynamic vs. Conventional, this time in Manchester
November 29, 2011
Last Friday, I made my way from a foggy London up to Manchester by train with a clinking suitcase full of bottles, the whites wrapped in ice packs. I needn’t have bothered cooling them because it was icy when I arrived into a strangely deserted station. Call it some kind of sixth sense if you like, or some kind of alignment in the heavens, but I had this funny feeling that we might get exactly…
Wine Drinking No. 1: Biodynamic vs. Conventional
November 22, 2011
A week ago, a bunch of us got together with the intention of opening a load of bottles. I prefer to call it a ‘wine drinking’ rather than a ‘wine tasting’. For obvious reasons. The excuse theme was ‘Biodynamic vs. Conventional wines'. Of the 15 people in the room, the majority were normal drinkers and not experts – only a couple of us were really into wine. And we were the only ones who had even…
Corison: elegant, drinkable, remarkable
November 16, 2011
For a producer with a well established, albeit understated, reputation, we were surprised to find such a small winery. It lies between Rutherford and Oakville, just next to the main motorway that runs through the Napa Valley, Highway 29. The timber-framed Victorian-style building is the antithesis of some of the flashy modern estates that populate this region. This quiet authenticity was an…
Wine Rack: Back to the Future
November 8, 2011
Unwins; deceased. Threshers; defunct. Victoria Wine; departed. The era of the off-licence chain is over. Like Crocs, they died out in the Noughties. And since the Threshers insulting ‘3 for 2’ non-deal of their final years, few of us have looked back. Caught between the low prices of the supermarkets and the good ranges of the independent merchants, they had little to offer. So how come Wine Rack…
Lea & Sandeman: Classic but up-to-date
November 4, 2011
Charles Lea and Patrick Sandeman set up their first shop 23 years ago, and now they have four, all dotted around the posher parts of London (Chelsea, Notting Hill, Barnes and Chiswick). If you have one around the corner from where you live, you can consider yourself lucky. Not just because you are probably quite rich, but also because these are excellent shops that stock some thrilling bottles of…
Tesco Wine Fair: the good, the bad and the ugly
November 2, 2011
I’m not going to lie to you. The masochist in me just couldn’t wait to go to the Tesco Wine Fair. I’ve been before. I always go; usually alone. It’s my naughty little secret. This is the ticketed event they put on every year for their customers. It costs between £6 and £10 to get in, and they have either one or two sessions during the course of a day. I went to one of the London sessions, at the…
The future of wine packaging part 2: Bag-in-box, bang up-to-date
October 28, 2011
In yesterday's post, I mentioned a company called Sfuso who supply a couple of the shops in London that offer wine refill services. I met with the owner, Marina Janković, to taste through her small range of wines in her shared office space in East London. The company sprang from her experiences living in Italy buying ‘sfuso’ wine i.e. taking refillable containers direct to the winemaker to fill…