‘Cash-rich, time-poor’ are the by-words of every self-respecting professional. So now that we can get personal service to customise every aspect of our busy lives, can we do the same for our wine buying? Stressed mother of two Beverley Blanning MW finds out
Away from the pressure of demanding shareholders, the boss of UK retail giant Marks & Spencer chooses to unwind by feeding his ‘addiction’ to top-end wines, writes BEVERLEY BLANNING MW
Grapes and oak are natural partners. When used well, oak can add as much to a wine’s flavour as the grapes themselves, as BEVERLEY BLANNING MW discovers.
A sale of historic wines from Ukraine’s Massandra collection failed to excite interest last week at Sotheby’s in London: 63% of the lots failed to sell.
The Douro discovered a long time ago that Touriga Nacional can play a starring role in red wines as well as port. Now the south is getting in on the act, and the resulting wines are deep-coloured, elegant and concentrated, says BEVERLEY BLANNING MW
A band of Côtes du Rhône Villages winemakers claiming to be a bit mad have formed a unique club. BEVERLEY BLANNING MW meets the talented Toqués des Dentelles
The first Italian-Chilean joint venture has just been announced in Chile – between Marchesi Antinori and Chilean winery Haras de Pirque.
The old wine villages of Alsace have a timeless beauty. Immaculate streets, colourful, half-timbered houses and overflowing window boxes provide evidence of the region's long and illustrious history. Viticulture was well established here by the second century AD and today the region produces nearly 20% of all the still white wine in France. Yet in many ways, Alsace wines are still seen as wines for the connoisseur and are less well understood than the other classic wines from the rest of France.
Talk to any French winemaker and before long you're likely to hear the familiar grumbles about their lot. If it's not the weather, it's the unfair competition from New World wines robbing them of their market share or, failing that, the endless red tape that binds a country already hidebound by regulations. But a couple of hours south of Paris, in the ultra-traditional wine country of Chablis, there is an air of serenity. Producers have just enjoyed a near-perfect 2002 vintage and the wine is selling better than ever. In the words of winemaker Michel Laroche: 'In Chablis we have no reason to complain. Nobody's crying here.'
In search of consistent quality, winemakers are more and more often turning to alternative closures, rather than the traditional cork. BEVERLEY BLANNING MW reports on the ever raging debate about the relative merits of the two
