While there’s much back-slapping over the quality of the 2009 harvest across Europe, here similar success has only heaped further pressure on the cellars of the Langhe, many fit to bursting after a dazzling run of ‘five-star’ vintages, from 1995 to the present day (bar 2002).

On Wednesday we held our annual Burgundy en primeur tasting, where Jasper and his producers got the chance to show off their 2008s to the eagerly awaiting public (and press!)   In between pouring and note-taking, we managed to catch a few words with Jasper and Benjamin Leroux, to talk about 2008 as a vintage: […]

How does one gauge the success of an evening’s dinner, at Berrys’ in this case? By the level of decibels or (business) cards swapped at its close?  The number of empty glasses or perhaps more crudely, by the amount of orders taken? At Andre Ostertag‘s mercurial tasting recently, for example, I measured it by the time […]

Believe me, I’ve never witnessed a tasting room reduced to such stunned silence. The 30 guests attending André’s two-hour Alsace masterclass in Berrys’ Pickering Cellar on Thursday sat glued to their seats even for an extra ten minutes after the session finished, open-mouthed, as if begging for more. The Alchemist of Alsace, André Ostertag, had […]