{"id":13635,"date":"2015-12-31T10:40:38","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T10:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=13635"},"modified":"2015-12-31T11:43:33","modified_gmt":"2015-12-31T11:43:33","slug":"2015-a-year-in-pictures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/2015-a-year-in-pictures","title":{"rendered":"2015, a year in pictures"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

January: a trip to the Ahr Valley<\/a>, Germany. Pinot Noir country. Thanks Lars Daniels for being my travel companion.<\/p>\n

\"zellamsee1\"<\/p>\n

February: Zell Am Zee, Austria, for some skiing. Managed one day of 3 (injured knee). Not my core competency, it must be said.<\/p>\n

\"ribiero1-001\"<\/p>\n

March: a visit to northwest Spain and Portugal, with Nick Oakley. Such interesting things happening in this part of the world. Not least: single-variety Vinho Verde. The next big thing?<\/p>\n

\"IMGP9515\"<\/p>\n

March: Arinto about to go into the ground. A vineyard is born. Vinho Verde.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

March: Cockburn’s Bicentenary tasting<\/a><\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

March: my first ProWein. Telling the world about NZ Sauvignon Blanc and Canadian wine was my task.<\/p>\n

\"st<\/p>\n

March: back to St James, Cape Town. Fifth year in a row, judging the Top100 South African Wines competition.<\/p>\n

\"IMGP0063\"<\/p>\n

April: a few days in Franschhoek, exploring the real heart of this misunderstood wine valley. Here, with Basil Landau in his ancient Semillon vineyard. Kevin Swart is also in shot: it was his idea to bring me to visit this lovely place.<\/p>\n

\"IMGP9822\"<\/p>\n

April: the view from SushiSamba, where I was at a Bruno Paillard event. London is a wonderful city. I’ve lived here all my adult life and I’m still getting to know it.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

May: Canadian wine tasting at Canada House, with dudes like this (Norm Hardie)<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

May: RAW Fair was brilliant. Such a good bunch of wines<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

May: London Wine Trade Fair was excellent this year. Bumped into two of my favourite Saffers, too (Adi Badenhorst, Duncan Savage)<\/p>\n

\"IMGP1580\"<\/p>\n

May: super-proud to be showing some Canadian wine peeps around some of England’s finest sparkling wine producers. This is Nyetimber. We also did Hambledon and Coates & Seely. 2015 was a big year for English sparkling wine.<\/p>\n

\"IMGP2106\"<\/p>\n

June: Washington State. In in-depth exploration of Washington State (and here, in Walla Walla, I think we may have been just over into Oregon) with Treve Ring, Richard Hemming, Kevin Pogue (who was explaining some terroir to us) and Kate Sweet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IMGP1879\"<\/p>\n

June: Cabernet Sauvignon, Washington State<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

July: visiting Niagara wine country again. Including this dude: Thomas Bachelder<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8057\"<\/p>\n

July: Niagara Falls, Canada. Judging the WineAlign National Wine Awards<\/a> with a wonderful but slightly bonkers group of humans. I guess I fit in well.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

July: In South Africa again, to judge the Standard Bank Top 10 Chenin Blanc<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

July: In Portugal for a Lallemand conference in Sintra, and to do a talk on the future of natural wine in Lisbon<\/p>\n

\"IMG_8759\"<\/p>\n

August: had a beautiful time in Tampere, Finland, lecturing to a group of Sommeliers. Thank you Heidi and Matti for inviting me!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7564\"<\/p>\n

Late to the game, 2015 was the year when I really got into Grower Champagne. This beauty courtesy Francis and Bronwen Percival.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

It has been a year filled with good lunches. Most of the best have involved these two fellas. Keith Prothero and Master of Lunch Greg Sherwood.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

September: Cape Wine was epic. Lots of amazing wines. Here are two of the dudes: Donovan Rall and Peter-Allan Finlayson.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

September: while in South Africa, had a beautiful time at the Sanbona game reserve.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

September: It’s been a big year for Noble Rot. Mark and Dan opened their wine bar at last. And the triumph of the year was probably this well publicized blind tasting<\/a> that put English Sparkling Wine firmly on the map.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

September: Napa Valley. Memorable trip. Included a face plant at Mayacamas, which was my least favourite moment but my favourite visit. This is one of their replanted vineyards.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

September: the view from Cain, another mountain vineyard in Napa<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

October: in the Douro with the Douro Boys. Super trip.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

October: in Champagne. I definitely need to spend more time here.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

November: in Hong Kong for the first time, taking part in the wine fair<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0072\"<\/p>\n

November: Rugby World Cup Final. Quite an event.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

November: off to Italy. Watching grapes dry at Masi, Veneto.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

November: visiting Poli, amazing grappa producer<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

November: watching more grapes dry, this time at Maculan<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

December: Rootstock Festival, Sydney. Here with Amber and Taras Ochota.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/p>\n

December: had an amazing time visiting some of Australia’s new wave producers. Pictured here, in the Barossa, Fraser McKinley (Sami Odi), Abel Gibson (Ruggabellus) and Tom Shobbrook.<\/p>\n

So that’s a brief glimpse of 2015. It has been eventful, fun and also very complex. I’m so looking forward to 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January: a trip to the Ahr Valley, Germany. Pinot Noir country. Thanks Lars Daniels for being my travel companion. February: Zell Am Zee, Austria, for some skiing. Managed one day…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13635"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13677,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13635\/revisions\/13677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}