Imagine you were a synthetic chemist, smitten with wine. You tried a great Burgundy, and you simply couldn’t get this wine out of your mind. Sadly, your salary as a…
A great day’s cricket
Spent the day playing cricket. Wine Trade vs. Hampshire Hogs, down at their beautiful ground in Warnford. Last year we beat them narrowly (report here). So would we repeat the…
Ladybirds
Recently spotted on my vines, a couple of different ladybird species. Above we have the kidney spot ladybird, Chilocorus renipustulatus. It’s welcome: it eats scale insects such as mealybugs. Below,…
Tasting a sample of wine sort of sucks
Don’t get me wrong. I love big tastings where you get a chance to taste lots of wine. It’s an incredible opportunity for a wine writer to be able to…
At Wimbledon, drinking fizz and watching The Fed
Had a super day’s fun at Wimbledon today. Hospitality courtesy of Champagne Lanson saw a troop of wine press gather on a perfect day for tennis, including Tim Atkin, Anthony…
Flowering has started and the hats are coming off
Flowering has started on my Pinot Noir vines. You’ll see that some of the flowers have emerged; others still have their caps on. These browning caps can cause botrytis later…
The England football team…
…are staying in the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands, Cape Town. I checked by blog and found out that I stayed there back in November 2005 (entry is on this page,…
Visiting Laithwaites, one of the UK’s most important wine merchants
Yesterday I visited Laithwaites’ large wine shop in Vinopolis, near London Bridge station. I tasted a selection of the range and then had lunch with buying director Justin Howard-Sneyd (above)…
An unusual but lovely natural Chenin
This is something rather different. A natural wine, with no sulphur dioxide added, and slightly sparkling: it started sweet and refermented in the bottle. 600 bottles made. It’s another from…