While the country might be associated with Marlborough Sauvignon, New Zealand has much more to offer. Recently returned from the country, Amanda Barnes explains why Syrah is emerging as one of its most prized varieties, producing complex and cellar-worthy styles

Chile may be the slimmest of all wine countries, but it certainly isn’t thin on the ground when it comes to diversity, says Amanda Barnes It is telling that most Chileans take their title as a “good-value” wine producer to be a burdensome insinuation that their wines are pedestrian and dull. But that assumption couldn’t […]

As we approach World Carménère Day, wine writer Amanda Barnes regales the grape’s remarkable history, detailing its path from near extinction to rapidly becoming Chile’s signature grape There’s more than one grape variety that has played hide and seek under the folds of time, but perhaps none has done it quite as spectacularly as Carménère. Although […]

Drinks writer Amanda Barnes is undergoing a mammoth project to capture the wine world as it stands today, in 80 harvests. Here she reports from Peru, a historic producer knocked down by its colonial ruler, and home to much, much more than Pisco. It might not be the first wine-producing country you think of in […]