In an ideal world, every wine lover would have the chance to travel the globe visiting each and every wine region. Yet the sad truth is that with work and home commitments (and no lottery win!) this isn’t usually possible. I’ve been spending most of my holidays in wine regions for years and still have a huge list to tick off. So that’s why we’re immensely privileged here at Berrys to welcome a stellar line-up of wine producers every year to our programme of tastings and dinners. This allows us and our customers to learn from these wonderfully passionate winemakers first-hand without making the trip – and let me tell you, there is nothing like meeting the person who has nurtured the grapes and crafted the wine to help you appreciate it more fully.

(more…)

In the run up to Christmas, our cellars beneath our No. 3 St James’s Street shop are always buzzing with tutored tastings, fine wine dinners and wine schools. What I love about teaching at Berrys is that our customers are always so keen to learn, and I suppose it’s easy to be enthusiastic when you’re learning about wine!

No matter how much theory you read about a certain wine region or grape variety, the best way to learn about wine is to taste it. This might seem like an obvious thing to say, but knowing that Chablis lies on Kimmeridgian clay won’t necessarily help you choose a wine to accompany your grilled salmon, whereas remembering the crisp minerality on the last Chablis you tasted will.

(more…)

Personally, I think Beaujolais is brilliant. Yet it presents us with a paradox. Having achieved phenomenal worldwide brand recognition in the 70s and 80s with their light, fruity ‘Nouveau’ style, many Beaujolais producers are now trying to disassociate themselves from this style and hence from the very source of their success. Why? Well, human nature being what it is, as soon as the popularity of Nouveau became evident, certain producers jumped on the bandwagon with such gusto that they began to produce huge quantities to meet demand, and as is often the case, quality suffered severely. This is not to say that all Nouveau produced is of poor quality, or even that those producers whose quality did drop weren’t also producing other excellent styles of Beaujolais – but in the branding of any product, including wine, perception can be more important than reality. And most people’s perception of Nouveau (and by association, of Beaujolais in general) is still that of a thin, acidic, banana-and-bubblegum-scented wine which is barely more than alcoholic Ribena. The region’s image suffered so badly that by May 2003 Jancis Robinson MW had described Beaujolais as in ‘self-avowed crisis’ due to slowing demand, with ten million litres of surplus wine sent for distillation in that year alone.

(more…)

 …Charles de Gaulle, French general & politician (1890–1970).

Thankfully the recent French Wine & French Cheese evening in our Pickering Cellar didn’t quite aim to cover all of the above, but we did get through quite a few…Here at Berrys we have been hosting wine & cheese events with our neighbours Paxton & Whitfield for many years, but it is only recently that we have expanded the series to focus on the wines and cheeses of particular countries, notably Spain, Italy and of course France, a country steeped in a long tradition of both vin and fromage.

(more…)