López de Heredia, who make Tondonia, is one of the classic old Rioja houses. They are super-traditional, and make fabulously old fashioned and brilliantly ageable wines. They are not for…
Ageno la Stoppa, a distinctive orange wine from Italy
This is one of those distinctive skin contact white wines that I think I liked quite a lot. But I wasn’t totally sure. If you’ve never tried Brettanomyces in white…
Don’t spit great wine!
In the wine trade, we taste. And then we spit. Have to, really, otherwise we’d all be permanently drunk and would die young. Sometimes, though, a wine is too good…
Some lovely wines with the Noble Rot guys
It was a sort of Christmas party. It was pretty epic. Noble Rot founders Mark Andrew and Dan Keeling threw a dinner for some of the people involved in the…
Three days, four restaurants: Mission, Dean St Townhouse, La Chapelle, Avenue
London is full of great places to eat, and I had a particularly good run from Sunday to Tuesday with four restaurant visits in three days. I’ve acknowledged here…
Grapeful, a new wine app
There’s a problem with wine. It’s just too confusing for normal people to deal with. There are tens of thousands of different products, ranging widely in price and quality, and…
The remarkable Tissot Savagnin 2008, a flor-aged Jura wine
This is a lovely, complex, detailed and – in some senses – difficult wine from Benedicte and Stephane Tissot in the Jura. It’s aged for 30 months in barrel under…
Jean-Paul Brun Terres Dorées Côte de Brouilly 2013
Gamay. A variety that I’m growing to love. I remember Kermit Lynch memorably describing Beaujolais as ‘the one night stand of wines.’ His point: not every wine has to be…
Burgundy and Rhone, Cathiard and J-L Grippat
Met for pre-dinner drinks with Raj Parr and his cousin Prerna at 28-50 yesterday. Two bottles between three before dinner wasn’t a smart idea, but they were super wines. The…