It has been a remarkably fine and easy to manage harvest in Burgundy. The sun is still shining and the grapes are in. It wasn’t a doddle all summer long, mind you, as tricky weather conditions in the first half of July required careful management in the vineyard. But August was a perfect summer month, […]

Week 15 of wine adventures in Piedmont It began a couple of weeks ago, with Dolcetto now in and bubbling away in the vats while the cool, grey, rainy weather of the past week has been shoved aside today by blue skies and brilliant sunshine. So the threat to the bulging, compact bunches of Barbera, their thin […]

Simon Staples asks Alexander Van Beek, President of Giscours and du Tertre for his early impressions of the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux:

Week 14 of wine adventures in Piedmont If Serralunga d’Alba’s Baroli have a Vosne-Romanée character and quality about them, then those of Castiglione Falletto across the valley resemble Chambolle-Musigny, and Monforte d’Alba, Gevrey Chambertin (or, if you’re more at home in the Gironde then substitute Vosne with Pauillac; Chambolle with Margaux and Gevrey with St.Julian!) […]