I mentioned a while back that I’d taken part in a tasting of English sparkling wine versus Champagne. Organized by counter-culture wine publication Noble Rot, it pitted a carefully selected…
The Barry Smith interview: what is the nature of wine perception, and is wine flavour objective?
Professor Barry Smith (above) is an academic philosopher with a particular interest in flavour. A keen wine geek, he organized the first symposium on wine and philosophy back in 2004,…
Gamay focus 14 – Bow & Arrow Gamay 2014, Oregon
Bow & Arrow is a relatively new Oregon winery. It’s located in Portland where Scott and Dana Frank, the people behind it, work in the wine business. These urban wineries…
Penfolds’ Chardonnays, from Koonunga Hill to Yattarna
Penfolds are famous for their Bin Series reds, a range led by the world famous Grange. But back in the mid-1990s they decided to try their hand at whites, and…
Champagne Dom Pérignon 2006
New release of a classic. And it’s lovely. A really good vintage for Dom P. [Aside, I never realized before that Dom stood for Dominus, and was a title for…
Dinner at Grain Store with the Hedges dudes, and ‘Score Revolution’
I had dinner last week with Boo Walker and Christophe Hedges, of Hedges in Washington State. I visited Hedges, the custodians of Red Mountain, this summer and it was a…
The Manchester derby
So, today was fun. It was the Manchester derby. Some explanation is needed. In the English Premier League, this is one of the biggest of all derby games (when two…
Researching my new book
At the moment, I’m spending a good portion of my waking moments in research activity. It’s a lovely aspect of what I do: dealing with new ideas. There’s something thrilling…
Gamay focus 13: Thibault Liger-Belair Moulin a Vent Les Rouchaux 2011
This is a really interesting Beaujolais from Thibault Liger-Belair, who has taken his Burgundian approach to the Gamay grape. I’ll let him explain his journey: I have made a part…