Jefford on Monday

Perhaps we're all biased, but the wine drinker's year seems one of unrivalled sensual excitement: we can relish the scents of distant places, and taste time itself via a seasonal weather pattern, on a near-nightly basis. No other drink will take you as far into the arms of earth and sky. I tracked some of those highlights from the first six months of 2012 last week. What did the second half of the year bring?

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My 24th year as a surrogate drinker is drawing to a close. 2012 has been a torrent of stimulation, some of the highlights of which I'll describe this week and next. Each wine, of course, is a year's work for its creator or creators. I thank them. That sometimes lonely labour, and the strength and courage it implies, is often in my mind as I drink.

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Jacques Lardière, one of Burgundy’s best-known (and best-loved) winemakers, is retiring from Louis Jadot, for whom he has worked for over 40 years. You probably already know this: like any A-list rock star, he has been on a kind of farewell tour recently. If you’ve met him, or read an interview with him (such as Stephen Brook’s, available here), you will know that he is as celebrated for his numinous discourse as for his wines.

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Much playtime at the recent EWBC conference in Turkey was spent in competitive pronunciation. All of the non-Turkish speakers, in particular, attempted to outdo each other in declaiming “Öküzgözü” and “Boğazkere”, two of the three outstanding indigenous red-grape varieties we all discovered over there.

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If you've followed Burgundy regularly over the last decade and a half, you will have seen its prices make for the mountains.

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