An Oasis 10 minutes from St Emilion

Just back from a glorious two weeks away and I thought I’d share a true find. We drove, taking the great overnight Brittany Ferry crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo (a marvelous meal, a movie in one of four cinemas and a great and spacious Commadore Cabin), five hours to Bordeaux and then a very […]

2005 Contino Vina del Olivo….A Rioja Revelation

I was brought up on Rioja, holidaying on the Costa Blanca every year.  My father would spend hours in the local bodegas truffling through their seemingly inexhaustible range of old Reservas and Gran Reservas.  Bringing back wines from the ’40s to ’60s for what seemed only a few hundred pesetas and trying to educate me on […]

Bordeaux 2008 – who’d have thought it?

And so the En Primeur Season draws to a close and what a strange and bizarre campaign it all was. Who would have thought Latour would open proceedings?   Who’d have thought we’d sell the luckiest number in China’s worth of Ch. d’Angludet….888 cases! Still a damned fine case at £150 if you haven’t bought […]

With great power comes great responsibility

I was utterly bewildered when I sat down to see Robert Parker’s scores the other night!  If you’ve been following our progress in Bordeaux then you will know that we were genuinely surprised by the ’08s – some of the wines we tasted were excellent and many surpassed our expectations.  But the blunt fact of […]