David Clark’s previous life was as part of the Williams Formula One racing team, but he changed pace by moving to Burgundy in 2003, where he now has a small winery in Morey-St-Denis and a couple of hectares of vineyards spread over a number of communes. There’s a nice profile of him over at Bill [...]
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Veraison – the stage in grape phenology where the berries change colour and the skins soften – is occurring at last with my Pinot Noir vines. I’ve deliberately chosen this rather ragged looking bunch to illustrate some of the challenges of growing wine grapes in the UK. First, you can see the ‘hen and chicken’ effect [...] This is the second wine of Chateau Haut-Brion, which prior to this vintage was labelled ‘Bahans de Haut-Brion’. At around £40 a bottle, it isn’t cheap. It sort of delivers, but this isn’t a wildly pleasurable wine at the moment, although it does have some savoury interest. Le Clarence de Haut Brion 2007 Pessac-Leognan, Bordeaux Three wines from Burgundy tasted, with some comments on ‘good’ reduction.
Describing wine in words is quite a difficult task. It’s certainly one of the challenges for wine writers. Just listing descriptors isn’t all that helpful. No matter how exotic they seem. Metaphors are useful, but they can easily sound contrived. At least, though, they treat the wine as a whole, which is the way we experience it. I try [...] Swiss wines rock. I tasted a lot on a visit in 2006 (write up here) and was really impressed. Of course, in the UK we don’t see all that many of them. But they can be quite serious. This is a superb Swiss white, part of the Chandra Kurt collection from Provins Valais. Chandra is a [...] I’m at the Oval – it’s the test match, England v Pakistan, first day. Shame not to see more people here. Ticket prices should be lower, I guess. Anyway, it’s teatime, and England are seven down, but fighting back. I had a nice bottle of Petaluma Chardonnay 2006 for lunch, as well as some D’Arenberg Laughing [...] Very interesting development in New Zealand’s Marlborough region. I’s a coalition of Marlborough wine growers, called MANA, for Marlborough Natural Winegrowers. The five producers involved are Fromm, Herzog, Huia, Seresin and Te Whare Ra. I like their approach, and like their wines. Here’s what they say about the venture: ‘Natural Winegrowing’ isn’t a prescriptively defined term and [...] Natural wines are often expensive, but frequently worth it. Here’s one that’s fantastic, and affordable. I can’t find it on the Oddbins website, so it may be a case of scouring stores to locate bottles. But this is a wine worth hunting down, I reckon. One of my bargains of the year, especially at the [...] |
 This is the blog of wine journalist Jamie Goode, online since 2001. Feel free to nose around; your comments are welcomed.
 
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