So, Rudy Kurniawan is the first person to be convicted in the USA by a Federal Court of counterfeiting wine. It seems that the fine wine auction market is awash…
Wines of the year, 2013
So, here are my wines of the year. It’s a strict meritocracy, I am afraid, and as this has been a very good year, it looks a little boastful. I…
New Kiwi wines from Rod Easthope
I first met Rod Easthope when he was winemaker at Craggy Range, based in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, back in 2008. I met him again in 2010 at the Hawkes…
Grape varieties and the diversity of wine
There’s another interesting piece by Andrew Jefford in Decanter looking at a census of grape varieties. He states: The plantings of the major varieties are steadily growing more dominant. Some…
On some wines we disagree
I was at a tasting recently, when a colleague whose opinion I respect asked me what I thought of a particular wine. He’d given it a score of 58/100. It…
Tasting versus drinking, again
I have a worry. It’s that wine critics are doing too much tasting and not enough drinking. The competition amongst the critics is becoming intense. As the Robert Parker era…
Wine on television
Wine industry commentator Robert Joseph has recently written about wine on television. The reason we don’t have much wine on TV, he asserts, is because wine isn’t interesting as a subjectfor…
Sparkling Wine Symposium 2013, a stunning line-up of speakers
OK, this is a plug. For an event of which I’m one of the organizing team. But I just wanted to bring everyone’s attention to the International Sparkling Wine Symposium…
Some lovely wines at The Sampler
The Sampler is such a great wine merchant. I spent some time at the South Kensington store this evening tasting wines from their enomatic machines. You don’t need to spend…