Month: March, 2016

The wildest winemaker in the West

Jim Clendenen, the shaggy-haired, famously renegade wine personality behind California’s Au Bon Climat, is still courting controversy three decades after founding his legendary winery. Here, Sophie Thorpe comes face to face with the Wildman of wine. “I don’t know how I went straight from Wild Boy to Wild Grandpa, I never got a wild middle […]

Bordeaux: the Right Bank explained

Following on from last month’s piece explaining the Left Bank, here we publish an excerpt from Exploring & Tasting Wine which introduces the Right Bank. The wine-lands on the Right Bank of the broad Gironde estuary look to Libourne rather than Bordeaux as their capital, and have Merlot rather than Cabernet Sauvignon as their chief […]

Eat, drink and sleep: Bordeaux (part four)

In the final chapter of our guide to Bordeaux, Philip Moulin offers a short-list of which producers to visit and the absolute essentials of any trip to the region. Visiting Bordeaux is not quite the customer-friendly experience that is say, a day spent in the Napa Valley. Let us not forget that this is France, […]

Bordeaux 2015: ahead of tasting

Ahead of Bordeaux en primeur, and our team’s all-important trip to taste the vintage, we provide a brief update on the 2015 growing season, and our Buying Director’s thoughts on the vintage thus far. Vintages ending in a five come with an expectation of greatness in Bordeaux – often these are the years that produce […]