For Haysley MacDonald, founder and owner of te Pā Wines in Marlborough, New Zealand, relaxing after the harvest doesn’t mean a glass of wine in the vineyard.

It means donning his flippers and heading into the ocean to grab some kina (sea urchins).

‘I’ve been freediving and collecting kaimoana [seafood] my whole life, but sea urchin has always been my favourite. I swim over everything else to get that,’ he says.

‘You eat it straight out of the shell,’ he continues. ‘I stick a knife through the centre then use a spoon to scoop out the orange roe, and just slurp it back. Kina is one of the most nutritious foods out there, with heaps of vitamins and minerals.’

If there are no urchins around, he’ll settle for abalone, red rock lobster, scallops and oysters – as well as spearing fish. ‘You name it, we’ll get it,’ he says.

Keeping culture alive

MacDonald’s vineyard is probably the closest one to the ocean in Marlborough – just 100 or so metres away – so it’s no surprise he spends almost as much time in the water as out of it.

Some of his earliest memories are of learning to freedive with his father. ‘We never had proper gear back then,’ he recalls. ‘Dad would just give us each a screwdriver and we’d use them to prise the abalone off the rocks. Nowadays people have fancy dive knives.’

Freediving and gathering kaimoana is a central part of Māori culture, MacDonald explains. He’s a descendent of some of the earliest Māori arrivals to New Zealand – some 800 years ago – and the skills involved have reached him via many generations.

Now he’s teaching his five children those same skills. ‘I like it even more these days because they’re catching the food for me,’ he jokes. ‘The joy on someone’s face when they grab their first lobster is cool. Those are special moments.’

Of course, freediving isn’t without risk. Just last year, Frédéric Panaïotis, chef de cave at Ruinart, died in a freediving accident.

MacDonald’s scariest moment in the water was realising a dark shadow was a big shark swimming towards him. ‘Luckily a cousin, who was in a boat, got between us,’ he says. ‘I managed to get out pretty quickly… That was definitely a nervous moment.'

But, he adds: ‘I’m too hungry diving to worry about the risks normally. We’ve done it our whole lives. We just instinctively know what to do. But yes, if you don’t respect the ocean, you’re going to get in trouble. You’ve got to adapt to the conditions you’re in – know the tides, know the weather.’

Dwindling resource

While the skills required are the same as those his ancestors would have needed, freediving for seafood is very different today due to overfishing.

‘We’ve got to go further and deeper to get the same seafood they would have gone just ankle-deep to get,’ MacDonald says. ‘I’ve been diving for nearly 40 years and I’ve seen massive changes. It’s a big worry.’

His greatest frustration is with commercial fishing: ‘It’s painful to watch. People don’t seem to care what they’re depleting.’ MacDonald sits on the board of his iwi (local tribe) and has been leading its work calling for downsizing the local fishery to preserve ocean life for generations to come.

While winemaking and freediving may seem like separate worlds, there is some overlap. ‘With both, you must work with the elements and adapt,’ he says.

And luckily MacDonald’s wines just happen to go superbly with freshly caught seafood. ‘If we’re cooking food on the boat trip back, we’ll often have a glass of wine,’ he says.

‘Fresh, raw sea urchin is quite an intense, salty flavour so it needs a richer style. It goes really well with our barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay.'

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Walk into most wine bars and order a sweet wine from Rioja and your server will look at you like you have two heads.

If, however, you happen to be in one of the few establishments with access to the wines of Bodega Ojuel, you may be met with a knowing smile and a nod, and be on your way to tasting a part of Rioja’s history that was once given up as lost.

Miguel Martínez didn’t mean to recover supurao, Rioja’s ancestral sweet wine, or even to become a winemaker. The way he explains it, he just sort of fell into it.

During his early 20s, he got a job in his grandparents’ village in the Sierra de Moncalvillo mountains restoring neveras – structures built to store snow that was later taken down to the cities to preserve food.

Older people would visit to see what the workers were doing, he explains, and tell stories about how they used to live.

One story that stayed with Martínez was how people would bring grapes home to eat during the winter.

When the grapes turned into raisins, instead of discarding them, locals would press them and make a sweet wine that they drank on special occasions such as weddings and baptisms.

It was known by different names, but the most common was supurao.

Something special

When Martínez asked his wine-loving friends about supurao, none had heard of it.

‘No one was making it any more,’ he says. ‘The only people who remembered it were very old, because it went back to their grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ time and had been lost a long time ago.’

Listening to their stories gave him his first inkling that supurao was something special.

When the old people talked about it, they would smile, he recalls. ‘And you know, with that generation, they didn’t always smile,’ he says. ‘But you’d ask them about the wine and they’d remember the special times in their lives.’

Martínez decided the wine needed to be brought back – not with any intention of selling it, he explains, but ‘just out of curiosity, to recover it’.

To source the grapes he would need, he turned to his grandparents’ old Garnacha and Tempranillo vineyards.

After painstakingly restoring them, he found and rebuilt an old, run-down barn in which to hang his grapes through the winter until they turned into raisins.

‘Then came the question: What do I do now?’ he recalls.

Pressing raisined grapes is incredibly difficult, requiring small presses with lots of force to extract tiny amounts of liquid. In the end, he achieved good results by using traditional olive oil presses.

There was just one more problem: he knew nothing about winemaking.

After a process of trial and error, Martínez made one small, 125-litre barrel, or about 300 half-bottles,

in 2009. He began selling his supurao locally, at village markets, where he was amazed by the reception among older people, who would taste it and share their own experiences with sweet wine.

At one such fair, an elderly woman told him she still had a bottle of supurao her father gave her on her wedding day. ‘I went to her apartment, and her grandson opened the door,’ Martínez recalls.

‘I started telling him what I’d come to see and he said, “Oh, yeah, that old thing.” And I said to myself, how things have changed, right?’ The bottle was from the 1970s. It had been opened and was partially oxidised, but it was still perfectly drinkable decades later.

‘That’s when everything started to make sense,’ Martínez says. ‘This wine had real historical importance.'

Attracting attention

Singlehandedly reviving a lost winemaking style didn’t go unnoticed, and over time, what he was doing started to attract attention.

Sommeliers, producers, famous winemakers and people connected to top restaurants began to visit. From there, his life changed.

‘Visitors would ask, “Don’t you make red or white wine?” So I started working more of those old vineyard plots and producing other wines,’ he says.

Now, he makes about 15,000 bottles a year, 3,000 of which are half-bottles of supurao.

In a region with access to vast quantities of wine from large, established wineries, Martínez’s fight to recover supurao is a way of bringing Rioja back to something that he says is ‘very much a grower’s wine, made by the person who owned the vineyards’. At the end of the day, ‘it was about caring about this wine again’.

Without realising it, the young man who fell into winemaking has helped bring a forgotten tradition back to life and shifted the way Rioja understands its past.

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Remembering Sam Neill, 1947 – 2026

The actor and winemaker Sam Neill passed away on 13 July in Sydney, Australia.

Born in Northern Ireland in 1947, Neill grew up in New Zealand and became a passionate ambassador for the country's wines. He bought his first vineyard in Central Otago in 1991 and established Two Paddocks winery in 1993, which is now one of New Zealand's most respected wine brands.

Earlier this month, he was recognised as a Fellow of New Zealand Winegrowers for promoting New Zealand wine. He was due to be inducted at a celebration dinner at the end of August.

The organisation commented: 'As an internationally acclaimed actor and tireless advocate for the industry over many years, Sam has generously used his profile, talents, and distinctive voice to promote New Zealand wine, bringing authenticity, warmth and global attention to the people, places, and stories behind the industry.'

Neill was known for his role as Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park films, as well as numerous other film and TV appearances including The Piano, Dead Calm, The Hunt for Red October and Peaky Blinders.

Decanter magazine published this interview with him in its July 2026 edition, where he discussed his wine lineage, his fondness for big Aussie reds, and how a producer once tried to woo him with two bottles of Latour 1964.

On the rack: Sam Neill on his love of wine

Interview by Lucy Shaw. As featured in Decanter magazine's July 2026 issue.

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‘This is the first time this has ever been done in history.

‘When humanity eventually settles on the moon, we want Dassai to be there to accompany people in their daily lives on the lunar surface as well.

‘The project began when our chairman and president [Hiroshi Sakurai], who had long dreamed of “one day brewing sake on the moon,” were approached by a space equipment manufacturer about conducting an experiment in space. Because of my background in life sciences, I was selected to lead the project.

‘I joined the company in 2021 after completing graduate school. Before joining the company, I conducted research on glaucoma at university. After joining, in addition to this project, I have also worked on research into the functionality of exosomes (extracellular vesicles) produced during the sake fermentation process.

‘Becoming the top researcher in the world is no easy task, but if I worked at the Dassai brewery, which is known for producing the best sake in Japan, I thought I might be able to help create the best sake in the world. That's why I decided to join the brewery as a kurabito (sake brewer).

‘Fermented foods such as miso, soy sauce, and vinegar form the foundation of Japanese food culture. This is not only because of their flavour, but also because of their functional and nutritional benefits. We believe fermented foods will also be essential for life on the moon.

‘I am responsible for designing the experiment to be conducted inside the ISS, while the actual brewing equipment was developed in collaboration with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Mitsubishi has decades of experience in the space development business, so they brought invaluable expertise to the project.

‘First and foremost, I don't know if you’re aware, alcohol is prohibited on the International Space Station. So, when we brought this proposal that we would ferment and produce alcohol on the ISS, NASA was like, “What’re you guys thinking?”

‘As you know, sake has been brewed in Japan for centuries. So, we were able to prove, not just anecdotally, but we gathered data and proved scientifically without a doubt that the actual production and brewing of sake is not dangerous.

‘We [sent] ingredients such as pre-steamed and dried rice (Yamada Nishiki) and dried koji mold from Earth to the ISS [on October 26, 2025]. These ingredients go into the equipment, and with the help of the astronauts, water [was] added to see if fermentation occurs.

‘The International Space Station, or ISS, is a completely confined space. If something goes wrong during an experiment, no one can go to help the astronauts. Sake brewing has a long history, but there's no data and knowledge about brewing in space. So we had to make a comprehensive list of all the byproducts generated during the fermentation process and submit data to show that each one of them met safety standards. Proving the safety of the experiment was our first major hurdle.’

‘The worst-case scenario would have been that fermentation does not progress in space, meaning sake cannot be brewed. However, this mission has ruled out that possibility.

‘The biggest difference on Earth is that yeast produces heat, and that heat then leads to convection. However, that’s really delayed and is slower in space. So, the moromi, which is the fermented mash, doesn’t mix very well, so everything progresses at a slower rate.

‘We have confirmed that under lunar gravity conditions, fermentation proceeds slightly more slowly compared to on Earth. We were able to confirm alcohol was produced.

'Our goal moving forward is to learn how to control this different behaviour from Earth and produce fine sake like the ones brewed on Earth … to prove that brewing sake under lunar gravity is technically feasible.’

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Taste Cloudsley Cellars wines with Adam Lowy in New York

Meet Adam in person and taste Cloudsley Cellars wines in the Grand Tasting room at Decanter's Fine Wine Encounter New York on 6 June.

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At the table with Carlton McCoy MS

Carlton McCoy has spent decades immersed in the world of fine wine – from restaurant floors and cellars to overseeing some of Napa Valley and Bordeaux’s most prestigious estates.

Now, ahead of a special Heitz Cellar masterclass at Decanter's Fine Wine Encounter in New York on 6 June, McCoy sat down with Decanter to discuss how Napa Cabernet is changing, why collectors should rethink old assumptions around aging and what makes mature Napa wines such compelling bottles at the table today.

Join Carlton McCoy for a one-of-a-kind tasting of Heitz Cellar wines, including rare library vintages dating back to 1979 at Decanter Fine Wine Encounter New York on 6 June.

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A drink with...Tom Gearing

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At the table with Katie Vogt

Katie Vogt will be attending Decanter's Fine Wine Encounter in New York on 6 June, along with top Pahlmeyer wines.

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Join Katie Vogt and taste top Pahlmeyer wines at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter New York 2026 on 6 June.

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About Cristian Rimoldi

Cristian Rimoldi is export director for Champagne Salon and Champagne Delamotte in the heart of the Côte des Blancs. Born in Argentina, as a youngster he spent a year studying in the US before returning to his home country to embark on marketing and business administration studies in Buenos Aires. His appreciation of French culture eventually led to him settling in Paris, where he completed a master’s degree in business and marketing at the IAE-Sorbonne and, later, an MBA specialising gastronomy and wine.

Cristian Rimoldi will be hosting a masterclass at Decanter's Fine Wine Encounter New York 2026 on 6 June, featuring Champagne Salon and Delamotte wines spanning several decades.

At the table with Cristian Rimoldi

Meet Cristian Rimoldi and taste a rare line-up of Champagne Salon and Delamotte wines at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter New York on 6 June.

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Edouard Moueix, owner of the négociant Ets Jean-Pierre Moueix, which distributes top Bordeaux to more than 500 importers across 87 countries, is under no illusions as to the significance of the impending En Primeur season.

And he is well positioned to know.

Something of a Bordeaux kingpin, his family also owns of a string of stellar properties on the region’s Right Bank, from the Pomerol estates La Fleur-Pétrus, Hosanna and Trotanoy to the St-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé Château Bélair-Monange.

Coming from such an authoritative source, it is a bold statement.

‘En Primeur is a wounded animal’

It is while in London to showcase his wines to the high-end clientele of Swiss fine-wine merchant Vintage Cellar that Moueix shares with me some candid reflections on the market.

‘En Primeur is a wounded animal,’ says the 49-year-old, citing the past three campaigns.

‘2024 was not a great vintage; 2023 was good but the volumes were huge, so there was no urgency; and the 2022 wines were fantastic but the prices were extremely high so it didn’t work.’

2025, he says, will be a ‘good-to-very-good-vintage’ across the board, with small volumes, which could help stimulate the market.

He predicts, with some confidence, that prices will be ‘very similar’ to 2024 – most likely with a modest increase, but for much better quality.

‘Put all those elements together, and it should be a successful campaign,’ he says. ‘If it isn’t, there’s a real problem.’

The hot, dry summer of 2025 yielded fewer but also smaller grapes, while the major rain events of the season were relatively localised.

As a result, says Moueix: ‘What I’ve tasted so far suggests the difference between the Left Bank and Right Bank. The elegance and controlled power on the Left Bank versus full-bodied and rounded juiciness on the Right Bank is more exaggerated this year.’

He expresses hope that En Primeur will be a relatively early and quick campaign – something that would further bolster the likelihood of a successful market response.

‘Our dream, as a négociant, is that the wines are all released by the time of [the trade show] Vinexpo in Hong Kong.'

This is set for the final week of May.

‘Worldwide crisis’

Moueix is adamant that Bordeaux producers know they need to keep prices down in a depressed market, but is keen to stress that the challenges are not just linked to the Gironde.

‘There's a massive crisis in wine all around the world,’ he says.

He is also quick to point out that it’s not just Bordeaux where prices have risen to an extent where consumers have been priced out.

‘I can’t afford to drink Burgundy anymore,’ he adds.

Though he is too diplomatic to say so, I sense a lingering frustration that Bordeaux has borne the brunt of price criticism compared to his counterparts in the Côte d’Or.

‘Bordeaux-bashing has become a national sport,’ he laughs. ‘There is a perception that Burgundy producers are always in the vineyard, while we are holed up in our big châteaux.’

Part of the problem, he believes, is that most Bordeaux producers don’t sell their wines themselves, which keeps them a step removed from the market.

‘What are they waiting for?’

Pouring Hosanna 2009 and La Fleur-Pétrus 2010 for the well-heeled customers of Vintage Cellar, however, Moueix says there is one trend for which Bordeaux producers should be grateful to Burgundy – the move to lower the age at which its wines are opened.

‘My grandfather never drank wines that were 50 years old,’ he said. ‘It’s only more recently that people started venerating wines of that age. Take the [Bordeaux] 2000s. That was a quarter of a century ago, yet some people still say they’re too young. What are they waiting for?’

Part of the reason, he says, is that the 1990s and 2000s yielded many ‘over-extracted’ wines which were ‘undrinkable’ on release.

‘That and the scourge of investment,’ he adds, which made such wines ‘better for the ego’.

Today, such hoarding is less in vogue, with consumers seemingly keen to broach wines earlier – a fashion that Moueix is pleased to see.

‘We should be drinking Bordeaux like Burgundy, at 10 to 15 years old. At 15 years old, you still have some fruit, but you have tertiary aromas too. The wine has found its balance. You have more pleasure.

'The older the wine, the more it loses its identity. With a 50-year-old wine, you’re lucky if you can even tell it’s from Bordeaux.’

‘100% Merlot… no faking it’

In general, however, fashion is not something of which Moueix takes heed. He remains a staunch champion of Merlot in the face of less-than-popular consumer perceptions – and viticultural challenges.

‘We’re very much into 100% Merlot for most of our properties,’ he says. ‘That way, there's no faking it. It’s the expression of a terroir through one variety.’

‘You can plant Cabernet Sauvignon wherever you want and you're going to produce a good to very good wine. There are very few places in the world where Merlot thrives and produces such a great level of quality and complexity, across an entire region, as it does on the Right Bank.’

That is something worth championing, he argues. And yet… ‘Most Right Bank wines are 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, but all people talk about is the Cab Franc. Why?’

The one place where the Moueix clan does focus on Cabernet is Napa Valley, where Edouard’s father Christian, who turns 80 this year, still manages the family’s Dominus Estate.

The project, begun in 1983, provides the family with an even broader perspective on the global market – and things are no rosier in California, Edouard says.

A quarter of the grapes in the Napa Valley went unpicked last year, he claims, with producers unwilling to buy from growers when they couldn’t be sure of selling the final wine.

‘It’s not a pretty time for the US’

Meanwhile, political tensions mean the $1bn Canadian market, as well as pockets elsewhere, has all but disappeared.

‘It’s not a pretty time for the US,’ he says. ‘They’re hurting. It’s a big concern. We’re going to release the 2023 Dominus soon, and I’m not quite sure what to do.’

There are challenges beyond financial and political upheaval, he adds. ‘Our biggest competition in the US is drugs.’

‘Cannabis?’ I ask.

‘That and Ozempic,’ he replies, of injectable appetite suppressant. ‘Ozempic is a massive problem.’

It all makes for something of a perfect storm. Yet this dynamo of the Bordeaux scene is far from downbeat.

‘Wine is such a magical product. It makes you feel better, makes you more social, brings inspiration to your conversation, loosens boundaries. What other product can offer that?’ Certainly not Ozempic.

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The head winemaker at Tuscan estate Querciabella, South-African born Manfred Ing brings a global perspective and a precise approach to the estate, shaping its stylistic evolution since 2010.

Here he discusses his deep connection with Italy, the contrast between Chianti Classico and Maremma, and the upcoming release of a new range of three Gran Selezione wines.

A drink with Manfred Ing

‘I'm a South African in Italy. I’ve always taken the road less travelled. When my friends went to work in Bordeaux, I went to Barolo. While they chased Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, I headed to Hawke’s Bay and Central Otago. Always trying to find my own path.

‘My grandparents are Italian, so I’ve always felt a pull towards the country – almost like something in my heart tugging me back.

'In 2009, after finishing harvest, I was travelling through Chianti and ended up in a conversation with the team at Querciabella. They surprised me by being interested in my background – Napa, Barolo, Pinot in Central Otago – and how that experience could help take the winery forward.

‘In Chianti you respect the land, the tradition, and Sangiovese, but at the same time you can be open-minded and push the limits a little. That combination really resonated with me.

‘Every time I look out over the vines at Lamole, it takes my breath away. I might be slightly biased since I bought a house just up the hill, but honestly, there’s something truly special about this place that’s hard to explain.

A modern approach with deep roots

‘What excites me most about these three Gran Selezione is how clearly they express their origins. The 2021 vintage gave us remarkable purity, so what you taste is really the voice of the vineyards.

'But in a way, they’re a single story told through three expressions. The nuances change – the fruit, the texture, the accents – yet the narrative is the same: precision, transparency, and a profound respect for Sangiovese. That’s the thread linking all three wines.

‘We never commit to the same parcels every year. We let the vintage guide us. Some sites whisper, others sing – our role is simply to listen and to bottle the stories worth telling.

‘This approach has deep roots. Long before the Gran Selezione category existed, Querciabella was already crafting single-origin Sangiovese prototypes – never released, yet, but essential in shaping the estate’s understanding of place.

‘The new UGA* framework simply gives us language for something we’ve always believed: Chianti Classico is a mosaic of extraordinary terroirs. Each site is capable of producing a singular and compelling expression of Sangiovese.

'Gran Selezione is evolving quickly'

‘Let’s be honest, Gran Selezione didn’t have the easiest start. There was confusion, there were mixed expectations, and a gap between the idea and its execution.

'If you look at where we are now – the level of ambition from producers, the critical attention, the feedback from collectors – it’s clear that Gran Selezione has found its stride.

‘The success we’re seeing today shows that when Gran Selezione is done with integrity – vineyard-focused, expressive of place, and true to Sangiovese – it has the potential to stand among the great wines of the world.

'That's important because it elevates the entire appellation, not just our own work. It pushes all of us to dig deeper, to be more precise, to trust in the identity of our sites. It gives coherence to the message. It encourages producers to pursue authenticity over formula.

‘Gran Selezione is evolving quickly. And if it continues to pursue greater purity and definition, its most significant contributions, to Chianti Classico and to Sangiovese, are still ahead.

'Maremma is like the wild west'

‘Maremma on the other hand is like the Wild West. It’s exciting because, coming from South Africa, I’m used to working with many varieties, soils, exposures – maybe 20 different grapes.

'In Chianti Classico, you have Sangiovese and a few things like Batar, our wonderful white wine, but the Consorzio sets clear rules.

‘In Maremma, you can do anything. Whole-bunch Syrah? Mourvèdre? Cab Franc? Go for it. It’s a place where we can experiment and create our own interpretation of the land. From Mongrana, our “baby super-Tuscan”, to wines that have a more rugged feel, the region gives us huge freedom.

'Maremma allows us to look toward the future – to try and see around the corner. Mother Nature is unpredictable, but the more we explore, the more prepared we can be, it helps us understand what the future holds.

'If I wasn't a winemaker, I'd be a chef'

‘I'm a massive foodie and if I wasn't a winemaker I'd be a chef, without a doubt.

'Tuscany is amazing for produce and ingredients. I feel incredibly lucky to be here. And yes – I’d be happy to cook for you next time! Absolutely.

‘I’m still here, my family is here, my boys go to school and play football here – honestly, it feels like home. I think I was born to be in this place. I think I was meant to be here. It feels right. Even though I’m not Italian, I have Sangiovese flowing in my veins.’

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About Dr Laura Catena

Dr Laura Catena is a fourth-generation Argentine vintner, author and a physician, with a medical degree from Stanford University. As MD of family winery Catena Zapata and founder of Luca Wines, she has spearheaded Argentina’s rise on the international wine stage. She is founder of the Catena Institute, writes regularly on wine and health-related research and has won several awards, including an ‘Old Vine Hero Award’ from The Old Vine Conference.

Dr Catena will be hosting a lunch at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter New York 2026 with a special selection of wines, including from acclaimed South American 'grand cru' the Adrianna Vineyard.

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Meet Dr Laura Catena and taste a special selection of Catena Zapata wines at the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter New York 2026 on 6 June.

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DWWA success: a proven track record

Standing out from the crowd has never been more important for wineries in today’s super competitive market and the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) has a proven track record of providing producers with the platform for success.

As the world’s largest wine competition, DWWA represents a hallmark of excellence.

For more than 20 years, its rigorous judging process involving leading experts has showcased fantastic wines from both iconic and lesser-known producers, at all price-points and from every corner of the vinous universe.

As the deadline for DWWA 2026 entries on 17 March draws near, family-owned winery Paris-Simoneau spoke to Decanter about the impact of its own success at last year’s competition.

Loire Valley-based Paris-Simoneau won three medals at DWWA 2025, including one of just 30 Value Golds (95pts) for its Réserve Sauvignon Blanc 2024 from the Touraine appellation. This is a coveted list of Gold medallists under £15-a-bottle.

Co-owner Carine Simoneau said the producer’s international outlook prompted its decision to enter DWWA, citing Decanter’s ‘big influence’ in key export markets, such as the UK and US.

'We sold everything...'

Success quickly translated into tangible market opportunities. Simoneau said the winery saw a flurry of new sales enquiries for its Gold medal-winning Touraine Sauvignon Blanc.

Many of those came from the US, despite the uncertainty surrounding additional import tariffs on European wines at the time.

‘We had plenty of new customers,’ she said. ‘We sold everything – all our Sauvignon Blanc [2024] – in the three months after the competition results.’

Guarantee of quality

Simoneau also described how a DWWA score of 95 points made prospective buyers sit up and take notice.

‘We have a lot of medals in France but Decanter, when you export, is different. People say, “ah 95 points, it must be beautiful”. It gives a guarantee [of quality].’

DWWA judges praised Paris-Simoneau’s Réserve Sauvignon Blanc 2024 as ‘long and abiding’, enjoying its ‘generous ripe citrus peel and crunchy green apple fruit coupled with grassy nettle characters’.

Value for money

For many wineries, finding funds for marketing campaigns can be a challenge, particularly amid rising costs, climate-related hazards and difficult macroeconomic conditions.

Yet, plenty of people continue to enjoy great wine and so it’s hugely important to find ways to connect with key buyers, as well as consumers.

Simoneau said her experience of DWWA success offered strong benefits in this regard. ‘It makes a big difference because we are a small winery, we don’t have the budget to do marketing.’

An award also gives prospective buyers the sense of finding ‘a little jewel’ that might otherwise have lain undiscovered, she added.

DWWA still represents a financial commitment, but Simoneau described it as an important investment based on the potential rewards on offer.

Other Touraine wineries enjoyed success at DWWA 2025, too, and Simoneau said that this helps to raise the profile of the whole area. ‘We don’t have a big appellation in Touraine,’ she said. ‘So it’s good because it shines a light on us.’

Recognition and benchmarking

DWWA’s expert judges take equal delight in unearthing gems in lesser-known vineyard regions and finding under-the-radar excellence in established growing areas.

For producers of all styles, therefore, the competition represents an opportunity to benchmark wines. All entries are blind-tasted by expert panels involving leading critics, journalists and buyers.

A medal, from Best in Show to Bronze, is a significant vote of confidence for a producer’s whole team, and for all the unseen work that goes into managing vineyards and caring for wines in the cellar.

Simoneau said, ‘It’s recognition for all of the workers in the vines. It’s very important for all of the staff.’

Achieving a top medal in the 2024 vintage was also a particularly good feeling after a tricky growing season. ‘We never expected to have 95pts because it was so difficult with the mildew and everything.’

The Paris-Simoneau estate has attained level three – the highest tier – in France’s Haute Valeur Environnementale (HVE) certification system. Simoneau explained how the wider property also includes forest, clover and cereal crops, and how looking after the soil is a big part of the producer’s ethos.

Alongside Sauvignon Blanc, grape varieties planted include Chenin Blanc, Gamay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, while the wine range spans sparkling, reds and rosé, as well as whites.

Simoneau also described how she and her brother-in-law, Sébastien Paris, had no direct winemaking experience when they took on the family estate, having built successful careers in engineering at Bombardier and as a restaurant chef respectively.

‘At the beginning it was a big challenge,’ she said. Earning praise from a competition like DWWA is, therefore, a major milestone. ‘It’s like passing an exam and you have a big qualification.’

Key dates for DWWA 2026

• 17 March: Entry, payment and direct delivery deadline
• 4 – 15 May: DWWA judging period
• 17 June: DWWA results announced on Decanter.com
• 5 August: DWWA 2026 magazine on sale

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Introducing Maria José Huertas Vega

Maria José Huertas Vega grew up in Zamora, Spain, and studied agricultural engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She is currently the head of wine at NH Hotels Spain and head sommelier at La Terraza del Casino, the rooftop two-star Michelin restaurant led by chef Paco Roncero at the Casino de Madrid. She is also a judge at the 2026 Decanter World Wine Awards.

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A seismic tasting 50 years ago

When a small group of California wines triumphed over France’s finest at the 1976 Judgement of Paris, few could have imagined the global shockwave it would set in motion.

Staged by the late Steven Spurrier (Decanter Consultant Editor for 25 years), the tasting event was meant to be a bicentennial celebration, pitting upstart American producers against benchmark French estates.

Instead, it redefined the hierarchy of fine wine and altered the course of California’s future.

The result – Burgundy’s most esteemed whites being bested by a Napa Valley Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena (a bottle of which now sits in an exhibit in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC) – cemented not only the estate’s reputation but also the credibility of an entire region.

Half a century later, the story still reverberates.

The event remains a symbol of innovation, resilience and the restless spirit that continues to drive Napa Valley.

For Bo Barrett (current CEO and son of Jim Barrett, the late winery founder), who was just 18 when the winning 1973 Chardonnay was bottled, the tasting was a catalytic moment – one that transformed his family’s modest dream into a global legacy.

In this conversation, exclusive to Decanter, Barrett looks back on the early days of Montelena, his father Jim’s improbable leap from law to wine, and the unvarnished realities behind a victory that helped reshape the American viticultural dream.

Decanter, in conversation with Bo Barrett

You were only a teenager when your father bought Chateau Montelena in 1972. What do you remember about those early days?

I remember that it was all quite remarkable.

Two factors stand out in my mind that led my dad to Montelena. The Vietnam War was going really badly at the time, and top income tax rates in the US were extraordinarily high.

My dad was a real estate and tax attorney for a company that built malls around the world, and when he saw that President Nixon had introduced new incentives to revive American agriculture – which was struggling – he spotted an opportunity.

The administration had just expanded major investment tax credits and accelerated-depreciation rules for agricultural projects.

In effect, if you were a high earner, you could either hand a huge portion of your income over in taxes, or you could invest that same money into American agriculture instead.

My dad’s business partner always called Montelena ‘the tax dodge that got out of hand’.

Were you with him when he first set eyes on Montelena?

I was with him on the second trip.

My dad was a pilot, and we’d fly around together looking at pomegranate and citrus groves, cattle ranches, all these different things.

I was probably 17 when I came with him on his second trip to check out Chateau Montelena.

This lake was totally overgrown. It was a total jungle. The vineyards were completely run down.

When did you realise this wasn’t just a family project but might be your life’s work?

I didn’t know I was going to be a farmer until that first summer. I came up and started working in the vineyard and kind of just took to it.

The vineyard manager was an Italian-American named John Roll. He’d ploughed with a mule for Madame [Hélène] de Pins at Beaulieu vineyard.

He taught me how to hunt deer, collect abalone and forage for mushrooms – all this good stuff. He taught me the joy of the mason, which is the pride you take in a hard day’s work.

What do you remember about that famous 1973 Chardonnay around bottling time?

From the summer of 1973 and all the way to ’76, my whole family was here. The bottle that’s in the Smithsonian – I know I filled that bottle.

My brother Mike put the nitrogen on the bottle, and my little brother Kev put the bottles in the case. My whole family’s fingerprints are on that bottle.

Tell us about the day that Steven Spurrier visited the winery.

I remember [the winemaker] Mike Grgich being very nervous and making us get the cellar pristine, super-spiffy clean. It was a VIP tour, same as when Robert Mondavi was coming – everything had to shine.

We had to pull the magic disappearing act: all the staff go away, no one’s around. I wasn’t there watching Steven taste.

Mike probably sent me to the vineyard. Honestly, we didn’t pay that much attention until later.

What about when the results of the Paris tasting came in?

When the telegram came in, we were in the cellar working, filling barrels, and the doors were wide open.

Grgich was out in the gravel parking lot, dancing and waving this piece of paper and yelling, ‘We won! We won!’ So we turned off our pumps and walked out. We were all joining him in this little Yugoslavian victory dance.

It was a hell of a surprise. George Taber [then a Time magazine reporter and the only journalist present at the event, and subsequently author of the 2006 book on the topic] called my dad, and my dad gave him a quote. He didn’t want to insult the French: ‘Not bad for kids from the sticks.’

In what ways and how quickly did things change for Montelena after the article in Time came out?

It was immediate. Suddenly, we had distributors calling from all over the country.

The people who had said, ‘No, we don’t carry California wines’ the week before called us up and said, ‘Hey, we’d like to sell your wine.’ The phone was lighting up.

We didn’t have a general manager, but the California ‘attention’ didn’t change that much.

The first immediate change was that the rest of the country recognised that California was making good wine.

You’ve said before that the Judgement of Paris was a catalyst rather than a miracle. What do you mean by that?

All the ingredients were there: the land, the light, the people, the willingness to do the work.

If there had never been Prohibition, California would’ve buried Europe a century ago.

The most important thing is, it made quality such a driving force for everybody’s goal and mission.

So it had that drive towards improved quality, which then drove consumers to seek out a superior product. And so it became a self-perpetuating thing.

How do you see the next 50 years for Napa Valley?

It’s going to be as tough as the last 50. Work harder than anybody, pick the steep hill and keep climbing.

When you think about legacy, about Chateau Montelena’s place in history, what comes to mind?

I do think about what we’ve accomplished with just trying to do the right thing – to make something special out of a special place. The drive to express American excellence is what we’re the proudest of.

And I just hope that the people who fall in behind us in this business understand that you have to do the hard work and keep your nose to the grindstone and have the right philosophy, which is always to reward people’s faith.

They’re taking a bet on buying your product and your job is to make that bet pay off.

Three of my four grandparents were immigrants. The other was born in a covered wagon. No wine experience at all. The opportunity that was presented to us by this great country – it’s been a good thing.

We’re just quiet about it. People ask, ‘Are you going to retire?’ I say, hell no. I love what I do.

I’ve got a beautiful place, friendly people to work with and a fantastic crew. It’s a nice little ship. I don’t want to give it up.

Benchmark Napa: A taste of modern-day Montelena

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For her book, The Look of Wine: Reading Wine Colour (Abrams, £25), colour designer Florence de la Rivière talked to 50 well-known names in the world of wine in her quest to understand the winemaker’s relationship with colour, and to create an inventory of chromatic language. She recently spoke to Decanter for the magazine's 'A drink with' series.

Florence de la Rivière: 'People struggle to describe colour in wine'

‘I have worked as a colour designer for more than 20 years, mainly on interior design projects in the public and private sectors.

‘The Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences in Bordeaux asked me to create a course for professionals about colour in wine. Visual observation is the first point of contact with wine, and yet vocabulary around colour has been lost. It used to be much richer, but today people struggle to describe colour in wine, so I’m trying to establish a new vocabulary.

‘I drew on Emile Peynaud's book Le Goût du Vin during my research. He was the last oenologist to define colour in wines very clearly, using a good vocabulary. I have added what I’ve taken from my observations in the vineyards and cellars, and using my professional knowledge.

Engaging a new generation

‘I want to help establish a link between the producer and the drinker. It feels as though we’ve lost the connection between the person who produces the wine and the consumer. Wine has become a very academic subject, but what matters to me is who made it and their intention.

‘From being a sensation, colour has become an index, measured by instruments. Science has taken over from the eye, and visual analysis entrusted to numbers has become lexically impoverished. I wanted to restore order and clarity, to propose a chromatic vocabulary – reference points for a common language. By helping to demystify the subject, hopefully it will encourage the younger generation to give wine a chance.

‘Colour is characterised by its intensity and its hue. In my book, I identified five major families of hues for red wines: ink, purple, ruby, garnet and tiled. I wanted to keep it simple. For white wines, we are in the realm of golds and ambers.

A wine’s colour provides clues

‘The only two wine styles named after their colour, vin jaune and orange wine, are white wines! Orange wine can be orange, but its colour spectrum is much broader. White wines are not white, but a variation of gold. The colour yellow has long had pejorative connotations – a yellow card in football, or yellow as a cowardly colour, for instance.

‘A wine’s colour provides clues about its origin, grape variety, winemaking and age. Wine is alive and its colour testifies to this, evolving over the lifetime of the wine. Red wine fades, white wine intensifies, and eventually the colour fades in all wines, losing its brightness, and turning terracotta. Back to the earth like humans!

‘Colour can mislead, of course. There is an assumption that paler red wines will be less powerful, but any connoisseur knows that is not always the case. It’s more an indication of the grape variety, and terroir. Similarly, the association between paleness and quality in rosé among some drinkers is misguided – they are using it as the sole quality control, judging on colour and intensity alone. Pale doesn’t equal better.

Colour can influence taste

‘Sight is predatory, and colour can famously influence our taste. We must master our vision. Jean-Claude Berrouet, winemaker at Petrus in Pomerol, says: “Knowledge makes perception intelligent.”

'To know something again is to recall information stored in our minds. And to be able to summon up this memory, we need words. Language shapes our thoughts and memories, but it may also limit them.

'Without words, a sensation goes unnoticed or is associated with another nearby sensation. Great sommeliers are great sommeliers as much because of their exceptional memories as their sensory abilities.

‘That's why I went to meet winemakers – I wanted to capture the vocabulary they would use. In general people were surprised to be asked about the colour of their wine, but ended up having a lot to say.

'Colour often guides the winemaker in decisions, consciously or unconsciously. When they have a finished product, there is a signatory colour, associated with the land that it comes from, the winemaking and the grape variety.

From Jura to Château d’Yquem

‘I remember, at Tissot in Jura, looking at its vin jaune, a classic example of the long-lived dry wine, made from a single grape variety (Savagnin), vinified under a veil of flor, and matured for six years and three months.

'The word “buttercup” came immediately to mind, but I didn't dare suggest the term at first to the winemaker Stéphane Tissot, as I didn't think it sounded serious enough. When I finally suggested it, he said it was exactly the colour of his wine. And it becomes a useful reference, because everyone knows what a buttercup flower looks like.

‘Similarly, I was trying to define the sweet Sauternes wines of Château Yquem, and the descriptors eluded me. I visited the Amber Treasures exhibition in Paris, and had a revelation. The shades of yellow, orange, red and mahogany amber highlighted by the antique dealer Kugel literally put these colours of sweet wines into words.

'I met with artisans in different fields beyond wine for my research, also – jewellers, goldsmiths, painters, gold leaf manufacturers, amber collectors and fabric publishers. It gave us the opportunity to exchange our views on colour, weaving a canvas of universal words and enriching visual appreciation.’

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The craft of barrel (or, to use the general term, cask) making has been dying out in Britain, after breweries ditched hand-crafted wooden vessels for cheaper metal kegs. But could the booming UK wine industry, and a growing interest in using home-made barrels crafted from home-grown oak, reverse this trend?

‘I started making some casks for a nearby winery in 2006, when I worked for Wadworth Brewery in Wiltshire, but that was with French oak. It was a passion of mine to make some from English oak, but it took time to find someone who could cut the wood in the right way for wine.

‘Since then, we’ve made about a dozen wine casks out of English oak, including for Gusbourne Estate and Chapel Down. At the moment, we’re working on an order for Williams Family Wines in Cambridgeshire.

’It’s understandable that English wineries are wanting to use English oak barrels. Everybody wants things that are local and sustainable. If you’re pulling in wood from all over the world, you have to think carefully about your carbon footprint.

‘We have two suppliers of English oak – one in Staffordshire and the other in east Yorkshire. Both are the same variety of oak (Quercus robur) but they have very different flavours. The Staffordshire oak you could use on white wine, but the Yorkshire would be better for a full-bodied red.

‘The Staffordshire one has notes of very green apple on the front, followed by hedgerow fruit like blackberries and bilberries. It’s similar to French oak but not quite as mouth-drying. We’ve not tried wine from it yet but, for whiskies, it brings out caramel and toffee apple flavours if you give the cask a medium toast.

‘The Yorkshire oak has flavours of green apple but not as fresh as the Staffordshire. It’s subtler, with more pronounced hedgerow fruit, and vanilla notes.

‘The difference is down to the grains, the way it’s grown, and the flavouring we put on the oak when we toast it. Most of the wood we’re using is around 120 years old.

‘I can tell different types of oak by chewing on pieces of them. It’s the first thing I do when we get some new oak. I was with a timber merchant once. They had German, French and English oak but didn’t know which was which, so I tasted them and told them.

‘I don’t know much about wine, though, so it’s like going back to school. We have a French man doing the wine cask sales for us. Being a proper broad Yorkshireman, I need him to translate things into plain English for me – none of this flowery stuff.

‘We do everything by hand, so each cask is unique. Most cooperages in France and America will be using machines now. Very few make them by hand like we do.

‘The cooperage industry in the UK isn’t healthy currently. There are just five of us left working in England and only three master coopers (which means you’ve trained an apprentice). All three of us work for the same company: Kingsborough Coopers. But growth in demand from the English whisky and rum industry has helped, and we think English wine will be next.

‘We also make casks for films. I made about 1,000 for the Moby-Dick film, In the Heart of the Sea. We got to meet Chris Hemsworth too. He was a nice chap. We offered him a beer but he said 10am was a bit early.

‘I started working at age 14 when I got a job at the local brewery sweeping the yard. The cooper wanted a hand and it went from there. The training took four years but you haven’t finished learning by then. I’ve been doing it for 46 years and I’m still learning every day.

‘When you go from being an apprentice to a cooper in England, you go through a trussing ceremony. You make a hogshead (a 54-gallon beer cask), then the four most recently graduated coopers put you in and bend and hammer it into shape while you’re in there. It’s really noisy and you have to hope you made it right so it doesn’t break. Then, they pour in stale ale, yeast, hops, shavings off the shop floor – anything they can find. It used to be the bucket from the toilet, but we’re not allowed to do that anymore.

‘You sit in there and they tip it onto its side and take you for a spin round the yard. They used to throw you in the air and shout “Trusso!” – but they’ve stopped that now too. Since I had my ceremony, I’ve trussed three apprentices myself. While you’re in there, you have to think: “I’ll get my own back one day.”

‘It’s a tough career but I can’t ever see myself retiring. I’ll carry on until I die if I can.’

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Canadian winemaker Cherie Spriggs didn’t count on building a career around English sparkling wine. A qualified oenologist, she had worked in some of the top wine regions across Australia, New Zealand and the US. However, a chance encounter with a bottle of Nyetimber put her on track to become the estate’s head winemaker. 

‘When I was still working at Averill Creek Vineyard in Canada, my parents were taking a trip to England. This was the first year that The World Atlas of Wine by Jancis Robinson MW included one page on England. So, when they asked: “Can we bring you back anything?” I went, “Yes, it looks like they make some wine in England, can you get me a bottle of Nyetimber?”

‘The job opportunities in Canada at that point were fine, but they weren’t quite filling my husband and me with excitement. Outside of wine I’m a keen runner and while out one evening my husband said: “Why don’t we apply to dream jobs?” The first thing that popped into my head was: “I’d really like to make sparkling wine in England.”

‘Regardless of where you are in the world there’s always an Achilles heel. California it’s too much alcohol; Australia it’s not enough acid. In England there is the potential for too much acidity, which we have to manage carefully because you want nice acids in sparkling wine but not too much.

‘Outside of wine, I’m a keen musician. As a classically trained pianist, I draw many parallels between the worlds of wine and music. I like to think of blending wine in musical terms to create the perfect harmony. I think consumers pick up on fresh vibrant flavours rather than the deeper, richer flavours. More the soprano/alto end rather than the tenor/bass end.

‘There’s no denying that [the UK] is a very northerly, maritime climate. So there is an inherent variability of one year to the next. I started in February 2007 and I’m still waiting to have two vintages that are similar.

‘Our 2016 Blanc de Blancs took the Champion Sparkling Wine honour at the International Wine Challenge this year – and that’s the first time it’s ever gone to a sparkling wine outside of Champagne. I also took home the trophy for Sparkling Winemaker of the Year, for the second time. I’m still the only female, and to date there’s only been one other producer outside of Champagne, who’s won it. It’s such a validation of what’s happening in this industry [and] it’s exciting for me because it’s very different from when I started.

‘I take some of my inspiration from outside of the sparkling wine world, for example German Riesling, as I like how the wines walk an interesting balance point.

‘What’s interesting is that we find ever more people when they’re tasting English sparkling who say: “You know what? I don’t really like Champagne, but I like this.” We’ve [created] the opportunity for people who don’t like that flavour to find a beautiful celebratory drink that they enjoy.

‘I enjoy red Burgundy – with Volnay having a particular soft spot for me – a good Chablis, Barolo and also some unconventional choices such as a Gewürztraminer from the Okanagan.

‘We cannot avoid comparisons with Champagne, because they’ve been the market preference for top quality for a long time. But I think there are some things about our climate in England that offer us an advantage. We are a little bit cooler than Champagne and our development period for the grapes on the vine is that little bit longer.

‘Many producers can make a good wine a certain number of times in 10 years. But one of the things that I’m particularly proud of is the consistency of quality that I’ve managed to bring at Nyetimber. One of the ways I looked to do that was the development of our multi-vintage products; our Classic Cuvee, our Cuvee Chérie Demi Sec and our Rosé multi-vintage wines.

‘In terms of food pairings, if I’m thinking of something quick and easy at home I often turn to something like eggs and asparagus, which is a combination that I’ve had with English sparkling plenty of times.

‘I don’t get any sense of animosity when we travel to Champagne and visit other winemakers. I don’t think they feel threatened because it’s not like they’re not going to continue doing amazing things.’

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Adam Morganstern photo credit: Adam Morganstern

What’s on your wine rack at the moment?

A lot of dry Italian whites. I’ve been really interested in Fiano di Avellino recently; dry Rieslings; an occasional dry white from southern Chile, California or Oregon. Much of what I drink is dictated by stories I’m working on, so can be out of my hands.

Where do you keep your wine?

Everywhere. I’m in a New York apartment and I have three wine fridges, plus racks on any outside walls that are not heated. I also have friends who let me keep wine at their places. It’s a typical New York story – you find space where you can.

How did you become interested in wine?

I visited France for the first time at age 14. This was the early 1970s, and in the US there were a lot of TV dinners and frozen foods. France exposed me to great ingredients and serious cooking. It opened my mind to how good food could be and made me want to have that experience over and over. As I got older, I added wine to that equation.

Who’s a memorable person with whom you’ve enjoyed a glass of wine?

Hugh Johnson. I first sat next to him at a wine dinner in the early 1990s. I don’t think there’s anybody who has better described the sensations of enjoying wine without descending into cliches.

Name a wine you’d love to try

I’ve never had a ’47 Château Cheval Blanc. Domaine Leroy is one of those grand cru wines where I’ve had a taste, but I would love to sit down with a bottle and just experience it over time. I’ve had a glass of Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier, Le Musigny, but a bottle would be a great thing.

Favourite wine for a special occasion?

For celebratory meals I like a progression of wines, so we’ll start with something sparkling. Burgundy will be involved if it’s not too exorbitant. It’s getting harder to afford Chambolles or any of the great Côte de Nuits. But there are so many good up-and-coming producers from Savigny-lès-Beaune or the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune that it’s like an endless series of discoveries.

Where do you buy your wines?

There are a lot of great retail shops in New York, such as Chambers Street Wines, Astor Wines, Flatiron Wines. I order online, for delivery. This is New York – I don’t have a car and there’s nowhere to park anyway.

Favourite restaurant pairings?

I’m always exploring new places. New York restaurants are doing a great job with wine but it’s really hard to find good bottles under $100 any more. I’m not talking about Michelin-starred restaurants – I’m talking about restaurants that purport to be ‘neighbourhood places’. But there are also pizza places in New York that have great lists of natural wines.

Your classic dinner party dish and wine combination?

Meat lasagna – but without béchamel. I don’t like béchamel. I have developed my own recipe, which you can find in The New York Times. Served with a Chianti Classico.

Your go-to wines for snacks and watching TV?

For the most part, I drink wine with meals, but if I have a yen for something like Marcona almonds, I’ll pick a good Sherry. I’m often in the mood to drink sparkling wine: Champagne, German Sekt, or one of the many great sparkling wines from Italy, Oregon or California.

Favourite supermarket wines?

Even if supermarkets in New York were permitted to sell wine, I wouldn’t be shopping in them. There are relatively inexpensive wines that I like. Lambert de Seyssel makes a sparkling wine that’s excellent. Raventós i Blanc is a wonderful source of inexpensive Cava. Viña Zorzal from Navarra in Spain makes a beautiful Garnacha that’s generally around $14. I drink so eclectically that I will never have a house wine, but if I did, it would probably be a box wine. They’ve gotten much better and are really good value.

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Born in Denmark, sommelier Majken Bech-Bailey is a pioneer in non-alcoholic pairings in some of the top Michelin-star restaurants in the world. Her own range of non-alcoholic wine alternatives, BÆK, is listed in restaurants including Gordon Ramsay High in London, Grace & Savour in Birmingham and Adare Manor in Co Limerick, Ireland.

‘Twelve or 13 years ago I had no idea that I would become a sommelier, in the fine dining world. Most people in the rural community I grew up in drank beer or rum and coke, not wine, and I didn’t really drink alcohol. I was all set to go to business school when I spent the summer working at a Michelin-star restaurant. It completely changed the direction of my life.

‘While I was there I tasted a white Burgundy with some age, paired with a lobster and tomato dish – I was blown away by the match, by how each elevated the other – and it made me want to learn more about wine.

‘Because I wasn’t a big drinker, I asked if I could play around with the non-alcoholic pairing at the restaurant – I wanted to create something more complex than what they were offering. After that I looked after the non-alcoholic pairing at every restaurant I worked at. It’s often an afterthought in restaurants and can be neglected where somms are so passionate about wine. You’ll find water sommeliers today, and tea sommeliers, but because the non-alcoholic category is so broad, it’s hard to find people, like me, who specialise in that area.

‘In fine dining the dishes are very complex – I want to respect that and offer guests the same experience, and satisfaction that they would receive if they were ordering wine.

‘I met my British husband, chef Jordan Bailey, in Denmark around 12 years ago. After working together in Michelin-star restaurants in Oslo, we moved to Ireland in 2019 to run our own restaurant, Aimsir, which won two Michelin stars after just four months.

‘It was great fun, but in 2023 we decided to start our own private catering and consultancy business instead. In the course of that I ran some masterclasses on non-alcoholic drinks, and restaurants started asking me to make a few bottles for them. In-house chefs and sommeliers often don’t have the resources to make elaborate non-alcoholic juices that might only last a week. That’s how BÆK [brook or stream in Danish] came about.

‘Previous to that I’d create a match for a specific dish. Now the challenge was to create two products, specifically designed to go with food, but without knowing what they’d be served with – one as an alternative to white wine, and one to red wine.

‘Just as with wine, we’re considering colour, clarity, aroma, texture, body, flavour and length. And we use some wine descriptors so that people will understand what it tastes like. We’re trying to mimic some of the elements of a wine, but we’re not trying to mimic wine itself. If you try to do that, you will always fail because it will never taste like wine – because it doesn’t contain alcohol. My vision was to create something that feels like having a glass of wine, but doesn’t necessarily taste like having a glass of wine. Lots of people said we should use a wine bottle as packaging, but I didn’t want that. I wanted it to be clear that the products are not wine – that instead they are something unique, that merit attention.

‘The advantage of having a chef for a husband is that I had access to an entire kitchen and range of ingredients. Plus he understands how to create a certain flavour experience.

‘I wanted the pepper and tannin you’d find in a red wine in the ‘red’ version; we ended up using the juice from aronia berries, because they are thick-skinned, almost bitter, with a tannic-like structure; we add this to Merlot grape juice, which is sweet and contrasts with the aronia; Earl Grey tea concentrate, Sichuan pepper, orange, clove, and barrel-aged raspberry balsamic vinegar.

‘With the white, instead of just going with a dry, high-acid drink, I wanted something rounder and with a little sweetness so it would go with savoury and sweet dishes. We use the juice of Chardonnay grapes and Bramley apples – Bramleys give the perfect balance of sweetness and tartness – infused with roasted Jerusalem artichokes; there’s also a touch of beeswax, honey, tonka beans and seasalt.

‘We’re also developing two sparkling versions: one that’s an aperitif style, and one to go with afternoon tea that has a stronger flavour profile.

‘I believe in the future of the non-alcoholic category. It’s booming, and partly because there is a generation of non-drinkers emerging. Many have been exposed to fine dining from a young age, and are sophisticated diners. They’re excited to come across an option that’s not Coke.’

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A sommelier by trade, with a degree in economics, Jeffrey Koren is director of wine at The Chancery Rosewood, London. His hospitality career began during university in Edinburgh, and he eventually left the corporate world to pursue it full time. He trained in Spain, and worked in top-tier restaurants across the UK and Scandinavia, including as sommelier at Michelin three-star Maaemo in Oslo. He later moved into wine buying at UK merchant Lay & Wheeler, before returning to hospitality as head of wine at Brasserie Marceline in London’s Canary Wharf.

My first memorable wine experience

Funnily enough, I can’t recall the wine I drank! As a student, I moved into a new house and bought the most expensive bottle of red wine my budget would allow and shared it with my new housemates. In many ways, it’s what we try to do with the wine programme at The Chancery Rosewood – not just sell a bottle of wine, but give people a truly unforgettable experience.

My go-to everyday wines

I don’t often drink when I’m at home, but my go-to wines tend to be crisp, fresh and mineral. Albariño is a firm favourite, and there’s almost always a bottle from winemakers Xurxo Alba (of Bodegas Albamar) or Anselmo Mendes in my fridge.

My favourite supermarket buy

I’m always impressed by the value that can be found in white Bordeaux, such as [the dry white from Sauternes] G de Guiraud.

My most embarrassing moment at work

Luckily, I’ve managed to avoid any major embarrassing moments, though I think most wine professionals have managed to break a glass or two in their time.

Pet hate

When it comes to wine pairings or wines by the glass, I prefer to let people come to their own conclusions about the wine rather than provide tasting notes. It’s important to spend time speaking about the people and places behind each bottle, as well as its justification for being included on the list or paired with a particular dish. Tasting notes can be quickly forgotten, but a good story is incredibly memorable.

My death row food and wine pairing

Champagne and fried chicken, or Champagne and oysters, or Champagne and BBQ flavour Hula Hoops, or Champagne and, well, you get the idea…

Best food and wine match at The Chancery Rosewood

There are so many different outlets here that it’s hard to pick a favourite. Alsatian winemaker Christophe Mittnacht’s Cuvée Gyotaku, which is featured in Tobi Masa, has been specially made with Japanese food in mind. His wife Yuka is a talented Japanese chef, and it’s a very gastronomic wine that pairs beautifully with the omakase.

In Serra, the Estate Xinomavro from Ktima Foundi has been a favourite with so many of the Mediterraneaninspired dishes.

In Jacqueline, our executive pastry chef Marius Dufay uses biodynamic produce to create one of the most innovative afternoon teas in London. Domaine Vacheron is one of Sancerre’s truly elite producers and farms biodynamically. The wine matches both the flavours and the space’s philosophy.

My fallback quick after-work fix

Champagne is for all occasions – especially after a long day at work!

Wine I’m most proud of on my list

Given The Chancery Rosewood’s history as the old US embassy, I’m thrilled to have a close relationship with so many iconic American producers. I’m especially proud of our selection of Pinot Noir from Oregon, which includes producers such as Flâneur Wines and Lingua Franca. My personal favourite is the Willamette Valley producer Maggie Harrison of Antica Terra, which makes one of the most hotly sought-after allocations of Oregon Pinot Noir.

The wine on my list that never fails to surprise guests

Our house Champagne isn’t what people would expect from a property of our size. We are privileged to partner with Pol Roger, and even the entry-level Brut Réserve has been hand-riddled (in the traditional way) and aged for four years in the house’s cellars. The result is a Champagne that stands out as one of the most exciting wines in its category.

Wines I’d avoid ordering from a restaurant list

I’d steer clear of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that wasn’t bottled in New Zealand. I’d also avoid anything ordered in bulk and bottled in market. Organisations such as Appellation Marlborough Wine support local growers, protect the reputation of the region and are a marker for quality.

Wine style I’m most excited about at the moment

Globally, there are so many examples of old-vine Grenache being made well. From places such as Spain, southern France, Australia or South Africa – there are loads of producers making exciting wines.

Wine style/grape that I really don’t enjoy drinking

I’ve never been enamoured with Viognier. There are a few examples I’ve tried that have come close to changing my mind, but I’m yet to be completely convinced.

Wine region/style that offers the greatest value for money right now

Value for money is usually relative. In the context of Burgundy, many exciting wines from the Mâconnais or Hautes-Côtes de Nuits show incredibly well against more highly priced peers. South African wines from top producers remain competitively priced, as do many from Central Europe.

My favourite wine region to visit, and favourite destination while I’m there

I adore Piedmont, and Ristorante Le Torri in the medieval village of Castiglione Falletto in the heart of Barolo is remarkable. There’s nothing quite like Piedmontese hospitality, and the region’s warmth and charm are something that everyone should experience at least once.

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It’s gift-giving season and celebrations galore — our yearly reminder to open the ‘good bottles’ for the ‘big moments’, as if wine ever needed a special occasion to be enjoyed.

Still, there’s something about the holidays that makes even the most laissez-faire drinker suddenly earnest about choosing well. Maybe it’s the twinkle lights, maybe it’s our annual free pass to be overly cheery, whatever it is, this is the time of year when people start seeking intention, usually spending a little more, thinking a bit harder, and yes, wine gets swept into that too.

That said, instead of assembling another traditional gift guide – and there is certainly no shortage of good ones pointing you toward bottles and wine-adjacent things from every corner of the world – we turned to California and asked its winemakers what they actually buy and give within their own community.

What do they reach for when they’re not drinking their own wines, what will they pull from the cellar for a special dinner, or bring to the twentieth holiday party of the month? What do they open when a ‘quick drink’ snowballs into a crowd?

California wine feels especially energised right now – new projects, new voices, a lot of curiosity in the air – which makes it all the more interesting to see which bottles winemakers themselves gravitate towards. So consider this a list of their favourite things – a guide, but not just for gifting, and maybe a gentle push to spend a little more time with California wines this season and beyond.

Wine gifting picks from six winemakers

Derek Baljeu, winemaker at Knights Bridge in Knights Valley, Sonoma County

2022 Spottswoode Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

‘If your holiday budget stretches, Spottswoode Cabernet is the bottle you give when you want to make a statement – this is a “meet the parents” bottle. It’s family-owned, female-led, organically farmed, and a pioneer in regenerative agriculture. More importantly, the wine is grace and balance personified – powerful without weight, elegant without fragility. The estate Cabernet is stunning, but Lyndenhurst – at less than half the price – carries the same DNA and makes an incredible gift for anyone who loves Napa but wants freshness and restraint. These wines are holiday showstoppers, whether wrapped in ribbon or sitting next to a roast.’

Gina Giugni, winemaker at Lady of the Sunshine, Edna Valley, Central Coast

2024 Gringet, Phelan Farm, San Luis Obispo Coast

‘Mikey (Giugni, winemaker at Scar of the Sea Wines) and I just drank this wine together on the porch while cleaning our chanterelle haul from our Mountain Meadow vineyard just a few weeks ago, after the early-season rains here on the SLO coast.

‘Everything about it is delightful – it’s farmed regeneratively and made naturally by Raj Parr, and is a great expression of the Savoie variety grown in the northernmost part of the SLO Coast AVA in Cambria. This is a wine I’ll be taking home for Christmas to blind my family on for our holiday gathering in Northern California, or I’ll be drinking again with friends around the New Year with Morro Bay oysters on the beach back home in Cayucos.’

Grace Corison Martin, assistant winemaker at Corison Winery, St. Helena, Napa Valley

2016 J Schram Blancs, Schramsberg, Napa Valley

‘I love Schramsberg, especially this time of year. I’m a big fan of the J. Schram Blancs (I recently had the 2016 and absolutely loved it).

‘To me, it’s some of the best sparkling wine you can find. It’s a great bottle if you’re looking to impress the in-laws or want something special for a holiday celebration. I grew up drinking Schramsberg over the holidays, and its cave tour was one of the first tasting experiences I went on in Napa – I had the best time.’

Rodrigo Soto, winemaker at Far Mountain, Moon Mountain, Sonoma County

2021 Mayacamas Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

‘If you’re reaching for a California Cabernet with a real sense of place – and price isn’t a constraint – Mayacamas is hard to beat. For me, mountain vineyards always win over the valley floor, and I’m drawn to producers who farm thoughtfully; Mayacamas’ organic approach shows in the wine’s balance and clarity. The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon is lovely!’

Meghan Zobeck, winemaker and owner of M Zobeck wines, California

2019 Blanc de Blancs, Caraccioli Cellars, Santa Lucia Highlands

‘Sparkling wine is fun to open and pairs well with all of the salty, rich foods that are abundant this time of year. When in doubt about what wine to bring or gift, I choose bubbles – or for your nerdy wine friend who thinks they only like bubbles produced in Champagne.

‘I like to surprise people with Caraccioli Cellars, based in the Santa Lucia Highlands, to expand their idea of what we are capable of making in the Golden State. Scott Caraccioli and his team are putting out some of the best sparkling wines in the country from their Escolle Vineyard, in addition to some killer Syrah and Gamay. I do believe that when the people behind the wines are awesome, the wine tastes even better.’

Morgan Twain-Peterson MW, owner and winemaker at Bedrock Wine Co, Sonoma County

2022 Evangelho Vineyard Carignan, Birdhorse Wines, Contra Costa County

‘Birdhorse is the project of wife-and-wife team Katie Rouse and Corinne Rich, who, in their day jobs, are the associate winemakers at Bedrock Wine Co. and Scribe, respectively. I love their wines because they are always delicious and forthright – they are not trying to be “grand” wines but rather ones that you can have a friendly conversation with.

‘Though they embrace a bit of the “natural wine” aesthetic in terms of cluster use, no oak, and minimal sulphur, both Katie and Corinne have an MS in Fermentation Science from Davis, so they are excellent winemakers. Be it the Carignan from the 1890s-planted vines at Evangelho I recommend here or their Valdiguié, the wines are satisfying, toothsome, and snappy, with good California fruit but balanced by good tension and lovely aromatics. I also just find that they work well almost anywhere. This is perfect for the friend who is super into lighter and juicier reds like Beaujolais, Frappato, or Freisa but could use a little more California wine in their life.’

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Caro Maurer MW has become the first Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) Resident Co-Chair after judging at the competition since 2013 and more recently, as Regional Chair, leading panels for Germany and the South & East Mediterranean.

As the world’s largest and most prestigious wine competition, DWWA has created the Resident Co-Chair role as part of continuous efforts to enhance its famously rigorous judging process, built around world-leading experts. 

‘Every day is different’

With more than 30 years of experience, Maurer brings a wealth of attributes to the new role thanks to her work as an editor, writer and educator. In 2011, she also became the first woman in the German-speaking world to attain the coveted Master of Wine title. 

Two days rarely look the same in Maurer’s action-packed professional life. 

Her regular work includes editing two pages every week on food and wine for General-Anzeiger, a daily newspaper in Bonn, plus writing for Decanter and leading food and wine magazine Der Feinschmecker. 

She also teaches about wine in several locations from Paris to Oslo – including for Wine & Spirit Education Trust Diploma (Level 4) courses – but also finds time to run masterclasses. ‘Every day is different. I never get bored,’ she said.

Journey into wine: ‘I always moved forward’

There was more of a steady progression than a single, eureka-style moment. That said, Maurer had been working as a correspondent in the US in the late 1980s and remembers encountering Riesling on her return to Germany. ‘I thought, “oh, wine can be that good?”.’

A prior focus on lifestyle writing led her to specialise in food and wine in 1994. ‘It was always easy to write about food but it was never easy for me to write about wine,’ she said.

‘I needed to know more, and digging into wine changes your life; when you get familiar with wine, when you start to understand wine.’ 

She added, ‘It became the major part of my life, next to my husband – let’s say [wine is] the second biggest love in my life.’

After completing a Diploma, Maurer took just four years to navigate the gruelling Master of Wine exams, joining this elite club in 2011 and winning the Quinta do Noval Award for best dissertation – entitled: ‘Erste Lage in Germany – a Classification in Development.’ 

Rather than setting out with a masterplan, she described herself as constantly moving forward. ‘I just went through all the doors which opened.’

Joy of discovery: ‘Just stay open to everything that comes your way’

Despite having achieved so much, Maurer said discovery remains one of the great joys of wine.

‘For me, the most exciting [region] is always the one I don’t know about. So, the next one I go to, and there are still many left for me to discover.’ 

Maurer recently returned from Crete. ‘Right now, I’m full of enthusiasm for Vidiano,’ she said. ‘But maybe in three months I will be in Chile and taste Chilean wines I’ve never tasted before. I’ve never been to Romania, and maybe there’s a lot to discover in Romania. 

‘So, I think, just stay open to everything that comes your way, and try it, taste it and discover it.’

It’s a thrilling time to be a wine drinker, she believes. ‘Right now, the wines being produced in the world are just amazing. You will find great wines everywhere.’

An exciting new role at DWWA 2026

Founded in 2004, DWWA has a long-standing record of showcasing winemakers and regions that deserve more attention on the international stage, alongside top examples of classic styles. Expert judges blind-tasted entries from 57 different countries at DWWA 2025.

Alongside a commitment to blind-tasting and specialist panels, a big part of what makes DWWA such a benchmark of quality is also the weight of importance given to discussion and collaboration between judges. 

Maurer’s Resident Co-Chair role reflects DWWA’s efforts to continually build on these solid foundations. 

Each year, a respected Regional Chair at the competition will step into this newly created role to help provide fresh perspective and insight alongside DWWA’s four established Co-Chairs:  Andrew Jefford, Beth Willard, Michael Hill Smith AM MW and Ronan Sayburn MS.

Maurer said her new position is in many ways an extension of what she already loves about the competition. ‘The wines and the people – these are the most exciting things about the new role,’ she said.

‘DWWA is always the most exciting place to go, because of the wines, for sure, but also you meet [hundreds] of people who are wine experts and who are sharing their expertise.’ 

Having enjoyed this aspect for more than a decade, Maurer will now be doing it on a larger scale. 

‘I love to discuss wine with people,’ she said. ‘At DWWA, everyone knows so much about wine that you can’t put your opinion above others. I think to consider their opinion and to weigh it against my perception of the wines on those different tables will be the most exciting moment [within the new role].’

Advice for wineries, writers and judges

For producers

What would Maurer say to a producer who hasn’t won a DWWA medal? 

‘Nobody loves to hear critique,’ said Maurer. In her own experience, she said it can take some initial time to absorb feedback, before then thinking about it as a ‘possibility to improve’ or do things differently.

For wineries missing out on a medal at DWWA, she advised, ‘I would just take time and think about the critique, think about the result, and use it – that’s the most important thing – use it to improve.’

Aspiring wine writers

What would be her advice to aspiring wine writers? ‘Lately, my advice is don’t do it!’,’ she quipped. More seriously, though, she said it’s important to consider the changing media landscape. 

‘I’m talking as a dinosaur who is still working with paper,’ she said, albeit this includes publications with an online presence. She suggested the future is more about communicating in a general sense, rather than purely writing. 

‘I would say look around at new media. For example, I see my colleague Konstantin Baum MW being very successful on YouTube. I think the future will offer more opportunities and channels which we’re not aware of right now – other ways to communicate about wine.’

That said, she still ‘loves to write’, and the craft isn’t completely finished. 

She praised award-winning DWWA Co-Chair Andrew Jefford as a ‘born writer’, for example. ‘If you are writing like Andrew Jefford, you could possibly still make your way into writing because people like him are appreciated.’

Aspiring wine judges

There’s no set path when it comes to judging, but Maurer’s advice was to consider: ‘Everybody wants to judge at Decanter, so what makes you stand out?.’

She added, ‘It is a combination of already knowing a lot, having a reputation and then being willing to apply. And then a bit of luck.’

‘You never stop learning’

In general, though, the most valuable lesson in wine is that one can never know everything, Maurer believes. 

‘You never stop learning. Every morning when you wake up there is a new wine, a new great winemaker, a new style. And so the most valuable lesson of my life is that I will learn about wine for the rest of my life.’

Article written by Chris Mercer. Interview with Caro Maurer MW by Loukia Xinari.

Entries for DWWAs 2026 are now open. Find all dates and details at enter.decanter.com and sign up to the DWWA newsletter here to receive all updates and information.

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Ask Heston Blumenthal what the secret to a perfect Christmas is and the answer may surprise you.

Is it mastering his groundbreaking technique for triple-cooked chips (or roasties) for the feast? Recreating his hidden orange Christmas pudding? Or going the full molecular gastronomy route and maybe trying your hand at snail porridge or Sound of the Sea?

‘It’s the smell of the Christmas tree,’ declares the celebrated chef of the Michelin three-star The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire. ‘It’s the most important thing of all – more than the food. Smell invokes so many memories.’

I’m in The Hinds Head, Blumenthal’s 15th-century, Michelin one-star pub next door to The Fat Duck, chatting with him and his wife Melanie Ceysson about the upcoming holiday season. Blumenthal, who is rounder now, with whitening whiskers, and is resplendent in a fir-green velvet suit, could be the autumn incarnation of Santa.

‘For some people, Christmas holds bad memories, but for most of us, it’s a moment that brings people together to celebrate, and [that smell] is a massive childhood memory that I’ve kept to adulthood,’ he says. ‘The smell of the Christmas tree takes me back to putting the baubles up, all the chocolate ornaments you hung and then later pulled off to eat, the presents… And as I grew up, the anticipation of Christmas became stronger and stronger.’

This ‘smell of Christmas’ is so important to Blumenthal that he has created a bespoke scent with a perfumier in France – including extracts of pine, cinnamon, raisins and apple – that is used during The Fat Duck services over the festive season to evoke that childhood anticipation among diners.

Celebrating milestones

It’s this emotion and playfulness, which runs throughout Blumenthal’s precise, imaginative, creations, that has seen The Fat Duck remain at the forefront of British cuisine. Last year it celebrated two decades of holding three Michelin stars and this year marks 30 years since Blumenthal opened his famous restaurant.

In addition to purchasing The Hinds Head in 2004, the self-taught chef has also launched Dinner by Heston Blumenthal restaurants in London (Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park) and Dubai – with two and one Michelin stars respectively – and in 2006, he was awarded an OBE for services to British gastronomy.

‘Look, I could never big myself up, but I realise there are some dishes I have done that have changed the world of cooking,’ he says. ‘I rebuffed the molecular gastronomy label because I thought everyone thought it was syringes and pipettes and stuff. Molecular gastronomy as a term makes sense, but I realised what I did was to create multi-sensory gastronomy: tasting, yes, but also smelling, hearing, touching – and feeling.’

Making changes

My conversation with Blumenthal and his wife doesn’t touch on his week-long manic episode in Provence in November 2023, which led to his sectioning, three weeks on a psychiatric ward and an ultimate diagnosis of type 1 bipolar disorder. But it’s clear the medication has affected his memory, speech and balance.

Soon after our meeting, I not only discover that Blumenthal had been prescribed Mounjaro to help manage the weight gained as a side-effect of his medication, but also that this prompted a new reduced menu at The Fat Duck. Designed specifically to cater for diners’ suppressed appetites brought on by weight-loss drugs, as well as a shift toward health-conscious eating, The Mindful Experience offers all of the dishes on The Journey tasting menu, but with portion sizes for each reduced by between 20% and 50%. The cost is £275 – £75 less than The Journey.

This joins the return of the à la carte menu (£195-£225), in celebration of the 30th anniversary, as well as the Christmas menu (£375-£450), which runs until 21 December. And from January, The Fat Duck is introducing The Top Seat, an exclusive solo dining experience that I was lucky enough to be the first to test out the day before our meeting in mid-September.

It was inspired by the increasing number of single diners requesting a booking, and I can confirm that it’s the ultimate treat for any foodie. You have a seat at the kitchen pass, amid all the quietly controlled action and precision of the brigade, along with the chance to chat with and be served by the same chefs you’ve seen prepare your iconic dishes – including two of the most complex desserts The Fat Duck’s pastry team has ever encountered, both of which have wine at their core.

The molecular DRC

For a vertical tasting The Fat Duck hosted with Burgundy’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in July this year, Blumenthal created Pinot Noir Grape. As he explains it, he broke down the base flavour profile of the wine into molecules and then paired these molecules with food.

It’s a reinvention of another wine-based Fat Duck dessert, Botrytis Cinerea, created in 2012 for a wine event the restaurant hosted with Bordeaux’s Château d’Yquem. The dish – on this year’s Christmas menu – recreates the profile of noble rot (the grape fungus central to Sauternes sweet wine production) and features, among other surprising flavours, tomatoes, Parmesan and fenugreek, along with honey and ‘the tiniest bit of passion fruit’.

‘But the Pinot dish… that was a ball breaker. It was six to 10 months in the making,’ recalls Blumenthal, who flew back and forth to Vosne-Romanée every week to try to capture the complexity and nuance of aromas and flavours in the legendary domaine’s wines.

‘It only came together the day before the dinner,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I was sweating it. To pair a dessert with a non-dessert wine, and for that wine to be DRC Echezeaux… That extra layer was what made it harder than the Botrytis dish to create.

‘Eventually, it was a strawberry macerated with pepper that did it,’ he says, describing one of the 20 elements of Pinot Noir Grape, which requires more than 50 stages of preparation. ‘We had the cep mushrooms, cherry, leather, tobacco and the olive, and the crystallised flowers, cocoa and Parmesan in the soil, but it was that strawberry that made the dish.’

Impulse shoppers

After all that, it’s unsurprising that Blumenthal cites DRC as his favourite producer. But it’s Burgundy in general that has long been his favourite wine. ‘When Burgundy is at its best, it’s the most hedonistic wine you can get: the complexity of smell, taste and texture… And we got a bottle of DRC Romanée-Conti as a wedding gift!’ he exclaims, suddenly remembering. ‘And a bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet!’

‘They’re in storage,’ interjects Ceysson. ‘That’s the start of our collection; it’s a work in progress! Mostly we just go to the supermarket and buy what we want for that night. If we’re travelling, we pick up a few bottles at a wine fair, or a case from wineries we visit, like Mas de Daumas Gassac in Languedoc recently.

‘We don’t really think about it too much; we are very impulsive – we’ve both got ADHD,’ she explains, with Blumenthal chiming in: ‘If we have too much choice, we can just spend an hour staring at a shelf and then walk out because it’s too complicated.’

But there’s one wine style Blumenthal is unlikely to choose. ‘New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc; it was my first “dislike” of wine. I like it a bit more now, but it’s not subtle, is it? It’s not Ladoucette or Cotat,’ he adds as justification, citing two acclaimed Central Loire producers. They discuss what they’ve eaten and drunk together recently. ‘Ragu bolognese and Valpolicella – a slightly aged one,’ says Blumenthal. ‘We had it two weeks ago, it was magic. Dal Forno, I think?’ Ceysson agrees, recalling that it was one of the bottles she bought ‘H’ for Christmas last year.

The Christmas meal

Now living in Provence, the pair’s past two Christmas meals – mainly with friends – have been a unique blend of Anglo-French traditions, with cooking duties shared. ‘She’s going to marry the sous vide machine,’ jokes Blumenthal.

‘We do a seafood platter and of course foie gras,’ says Ceysson. ‘Last year, I challenged myself to cook his Meat Fruit recipe. Not shaping it like a mandarin, but doing the mousse. ‘H always does the poultry. We did capon last year, this year chicken – always Bresse – and he loves to truffle it under the skin.’ (‘It’s about the only time we eat truffle,’ he adds.) ‘And then the veg,’ Ceysson continues. ‘There are lots of similarities between France and the UK, because we both have the potatoes and the greens, but last year, H brought a British touch with the red cabbage. That was good!

‘The cheese board is something very important in France that I bring to our Christmas,’ she adds. ‘We have beautiful cheeses here so we make sure to get some fancy ones. Like Brie de Meaux with truffles…’ ‘Britain produces more cheese than France, you know,’ adds her husband.

Anglo-French desserts

The conversation moves to dessert and Blumenthal makes a surprising revelation: ‘I never liked Christmas pudding until I did the hidden orange one for Waitrose. The thing that really turned me on to it was I steamed it, not microwaved it. It was wonderful! But you can’t eat too much of it.’

Since the UK supermarket ended its partnership with Blumenthal in early 2023, The Fat Duck team has sold a candied clementine christmas pudding via its website. ‘Last time we had it,’ he says, ‘Melanie poured about half a bottle of Cognac over the top. I’m surprised the firefighters didn’t come!’

Ceysson’s contribution to the sweet side of the festive feast has been ‘les treize desserts’ – an old Provence tradition, where 13 desserts (representing Jesus and the 12 apostles) are served after Christmas Eve dinner. Each guest must eat all 13 to guarantee good luck for the year to come. They include dried fruit and nuts, quince paste, fresh fruit, nougat, marzipan, candied fruits, biscuits and cakes – which often includes a yule log, or bûche de Noël.

‘We did have a bûche last year, but our dog ate it,’ says Ceysson. ‘Do you remember H? We had finally discovered a good patisserie guy, we found this village, drove quite far and really made a big effort to get this pastry. Harry – he’s a British Bulldog – he was really quiet at one point and we couldn’t understand why. We went to find him and…’

‘There was chocolate everywhere,’ finishes Blumenthal. ‘Harry had a good Christmas present.’

Switching off

‘We haven’t even spoken about Christmas presents yet, have we?’ Blumenthal asks. ‘How about a bit of peace?’ suggests Ceysson. ‘In the world and in life. That would be nice.’

She smiles and then reveals that when the restaurants close in December and January, and ‘it’s his time for a proper break; his mind can switch off’, there are always two things stashed in the suitcases they take to Provence.

The first is the scent of Christmas that Blumenthal created with the perfumier. ‘We spray it all around the house,’ she says. The second is the mince pies. ‘It’s the only thing we don’t cook. We always ask The Fat Duck pastry chefs for a box. It’s our little treat.’

‘And we usually eat them well before Christmas,’ adds Blumenthal. ‘We can’t wait!’

Just like those chocolate ornaments off the tree from his childhood.

Michelin-level mince pies

The Fat Duck’s mince pies (pictured below) – the ones Heston and Melanie take to France – are incredible. But preparing them is best left to the professionals. They take three days to make, require a vacuum sealer, sous-vide machine and meat injector, and the recipe calls for 45 ingredients – including Wagyu beef short ribs and Golden Oscietra caviar.

But if you still want to try your hand at making Michelin-starred mince pies, Heston has shared the recipe from Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (main image, above), which is far simpler and can be made using shop-bought ingredients and domestic kitchen appliances. Fruit mince (This recipe makes a lot, so you can keep any unused jars for the following year).

Fruit mince

(This recipe makes a lot, so you can keep any unused jars for the following year)

• 400g pears, peeled and chopped
• 400g Bramley apples, peeled and chopped
• 260g suet
• 300g raisins
• 200g sultanans
• 200g dried cranberries
• 200g currants
• 120g candied lemon peel, chopped
• 120g candied orange peel, chopped
• 240g muscovado sugar
• 2 each oranges & lemons, zest and juice
• 100g pecans, chopped
• 400ml brandy
• 200ml verjus
• 100g Sherry (not fino or manzanilla)
• 6g ground cinnamon
• 4g ground ginger
• 160g candied ginger in syrup, chopped

Method

Place all the liquids in a small pan and bring to the boil. Add all the other ingredients and slowly simmer while continually stirring. Keep reducing until thick – about 20-30 minutes – then leave to cool. Store in sanitised jars in the fridge for at least a month to mature, the longer the better. But you can also use it straight away if you don’t have the time.

Pastry

• 375g flour
• 260g butter, cold, in cubes
• 1 whole egg
• 125g golden caster sugar
• pinch of salt

Method

Place the flour, salt and cold butter in a stand mixer. With a paddle on low speed, work it until it becomes a fine crumb with no butter lumps left. Add the sugar and let it incorporate. Last, add the egg and let it just come together. Tip onto a work surface to bring it all together with your hands. Wrap up in cling film and rest in the fridge for one hour before rolling. Remove the dough from the fridge and leave at room temperature for 30min. Roll to 2mm with a light dusting of flour then rest for one hour before cutting. Use a 50mm (or whatever size you have) fluted cutter to cut out bases of the tart shell. Press into greased or lined mini tart tins and blind bake at 180°C/gas 4 for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool. Any excess pastry can be placed on a tray and baked at the same temperature and time. Once cooked and cooled, break this excess pastry into small pieces to sprinkle on top of the finished pies.

To compile

To make 12 pies, use 300g of the prepared mincemeat that has been mixed with 5g of mandarin zest. Fill each blind-baked pastry case with 25g of mincemeat (increase or decrease this quantity depending on the size of your cases) and sprinkle with the crumbled pastry. Either serve as is, or warmed through, and dusted lightly with icing sugar.

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‘I was born in a castle near Ferrara, where my father was the estate manager and owned a vineyard,’ Lodi says. ‘I was never expected to work for a living.’ But the free-spirited Sandra left home at 18 to see the world. Along the way, she made a friend who owned a Morgan – an early British-made sports car. ‘That was the beginning of my love for cars,’ she says.

On the fast-track

Back in Italy, she went to work in communications, for a company involved with Formula 1 motor racing, where she met the likes of race car drivers Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna, Eddie Irvine, Nigel Mansell, Gilles Villeneuve – and the man who would become both her life and business partner: scion of a landed Umbrian family and European racing champion, the late Fabrizio Violati.

‘When Ansa, the company I worked for, moved to America, Violati asked me if I would like to join him in opening a Ferrari museum in San Marino,’ says Lodi. It was the idea of Enzo Ferrari himself, a friend, and she jumped at the chance. And so, in 1989, the Maranello Rosso museum was born in the tiny Republic of San Marino.

The first car, purchased by Violati in 1965, was the fabled 1962 250 GTO, of which only 33 were ever made. ‘That model won the world championship [the International Championship for GT Manufacturers] in 1962, ’63 and ’64,’ explains Lodi.

Over the years, the collection grew to 25 road and track Ferraris, spanning the firm’s stylistic and technological development, up to the last model personally approved by Enzo before his death in 1988: a 1987 F40 – the most powerful car of its time. Lodi would regularly take the cars for a spin.

Which was her favourite? ‘The 1960 250 GT SWB Berlinetta Competizione Sports,’ she answers, without hesitation: an elegant, red, long-nosed, Pininfarina-designed model – a car well suited to the equally elegant Lodi, who, now a spritely septuagenarian, still exudes rock-chick appeal.

Nor was the collection just for petrol heads; there was nostalgia, too. An ivory-coloured 250 GT Cabriolet, long-associated with Marilyn Monroe (although its ownership remains unverified), for example, and Peter Sellers’ 500 Superfast. ‘He asked for the most expensive car in the world and Ferrari obliged,’ says Lodi.

Back to the land

The sale of the collection, in 2014, enabled Lodi to buy Tenuta Gacci – 9.3ha of rolling vineyards, famed since Etruscan times and painstakingly restored. They sit within 40ha of woodland and fallow fields inland from Rimini in the Marecchia valley.

Lodi’s son Alessio Vetrano is in charge. ‘My father made him taste wine from the age of four,’ says Lodi, shaking her head. ‘Too young.’ But it seems to have paid off. Gacci produces a single highly regarded IGT Rubicone red blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Ancellotta.

With her focus now on the vineyard, Lodi’s life has, in some ways, come full circle, and she has embraced the new venture with her customary gusto. From the estate, she can see the guillotine edge of Monte Titano, on which San Marino perches. And visitors to Gacci might just spot the flash of a bright-red supercar, framed by the vines.

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Ten years ago this month fine wine club 67 Pall Mall first opened its doors, in London. In the years since, sites have launched in Verbier, Singapore and Hong Kong – with others planned in Melbourne, Shanghai, Bordeaux and Beaune by 2030. To mark the anniversary, 67 Pall Mall compiled a trends report, based on sales data from the London club, plus a survey of its members. Its head of wine for Europe discusses the findings, the evolution of the club, and her observations on changing wine drinking habits. 

‘Ten years ago 67 Pall Mall brought something very different to the table. The Coravin system was making fine wine more accessible to everyone. The club offered super-attentive service, great glassware, plus the USP of wine-storage options, and a reasonable corkage charge. Plus a great list, of course, with a very large wine selection, including up to 1,000 by the glass.

‘Each club has a different list, which is always a combination of the international and local. So we’ll have a larger Bordeaux selection in the Bordeaux club, for instance; and we have 88 English wines on the London list. But there are always 5,000 to 6,000 references in total, so there will always be diversity.

‘I disagree with the pale, male and stale perception of the private members’ club demographic. We’ve always had an egalitarian approach, with a discounted membership fee for younger members, or those in the trade. We don’t want to be stuffy – we want to make fine wine accessible to everyone.

‘Inevitably perhaps, the older members still seem to lean more towards the classic regions. Our younger members appreciate those wines but are less loyal to them, and are keen to discover new regions and styles. The report echoed this, highlighting broadening tastes, from South African Syrah to German Pinot Noir.

‘We’re increasingly seeing that members are learning to navigate the new classic regions – drilling down into sub-regions. Discovery is turning to discernment. So they’re not just asking for South Africa, for example, but for Elgin, or Hemel en Aarde, and are learning about vintage quality in these areas. Yes there’s more vintage consistency in the New World, but challenging weather events such as wildfires do make, say, California vintages very different.

‘It’s fascinating to see that Sauvignon Blanc sales at the club fell 30% in volume in the course of the last 10 years. There are some amazing Sauvignons out there, but consumption was maybe slanted towards Marlborough, and people now want to discover other things.

‘We have also noticed a growing mindfulness around alcohol levels, which ties in with the Burgundisation of taste (Burgundy remains our members’ favourite region). They’re increasingly looking for more elegant, balanced, subtle wines – for finesse over power. We’ve seen a spike in interest in Sicily. Granted, this may be down to the London club’s Italian somms, but there are definitely more elegant, terroir-driven styles emerging from there that fit this taste profile.

‘Personally, I’m quite classical in my taste. I’m intrigued by the Jura. I enjoy continuing to discover what’s happening in Champagne, and also in Burgundy outside of the expensive areas – in Côte Chalonnaise, for instance, where grapes historically struggled to ripen but are now having an easier time.

‘Climate change was the most commonly cited concern for the future, with awareness greater among the younger generation, though notably its potential impact on signature styles in classic regions like Bordeaux, or Piedmont. We saw some scepticism around definitions too – the term sustainable is quite vague, and can be confusing. Is it sometimes just greenwashing?

‘More than half of respondents said rising prices have affected their drinking in recent years, leading them to switch wines or purchase fewer bottles. And there’s definitely a sense of people feeling the pinch. We also learned that 44% of our London club members are buying less wine to lay down than a decade ago. This could be down to a combination of factors. Maybe they’re buying less because they think they won’t be around to enjoy it. But also pricing at the top end, especially in Burgundy, has gone quite crazy. Then you have the Bordeaux en primeur fatigue – the awareness that there is no benefit to buying en primeur any more, since you can access older vintages on the secondary market at such competitive prices.

‘If I had to pick a couple of favourites from our current London list, I’d include Henriot’s Brut Souverain Champagne – it’s great value – lovely fruit concentration, balanced, and with a touch of tertiary. And there’s a fantastic Chenin Blanc from a Loire producer, Domaine de Bellivière, in Jasnières – again great value – classic Chenin fruit, pure, cool, mineral and bone-dry.’

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New York born and Amsterdam bred, Ava Mees List goes by her middle name, pronounced ‘Mase’. She has worked as a sommelier at Noma in Copenhagen since 2019, becoming the restaurant’s beverage director in 2022. Starting her career as a part-time bartender at an Art Deco literary café in Amsterdam after finishing her studies in cultural anthropology, she soon decided to dedicate her professional life to learning about and travelling for wine. From 2015 to 2018, Mees worked at sister restaurants Saturne and Clown Bar in Paris before moving to Copenhagen.

My first memorable wine experience

I didn’t really get into wine (or hospitality) until I was 25. Two months after I started my first job at Café Schiller in Amsterdam, my then boss Florien took me along to a pretty raucous winemakers’ party at Cave St Martin in Roquebrun, Roussillon, France. The owner was a good friend of Marcel Lapierre [of Domaine Lapierre in Beaujolais] and the only drinks served were red wine, mulled red wine and coffee. We called it the Purple Teeth Festival and it made me fall in love with the natural wine community. Before that, my signature drink was a house tequila and bitter lemon highball – I never looked back.

My go-to everyday wines

Jacques Lassaigne, Les Vignes de Montgueux made by Emmanuel Lassaigne. I know it is ridiculous to name a Champagne as an everyday wine, but during my time in Paris, I learned to disassociate the region from celebratory events. I keep a bottle in the fridge at all times.

My favourite supermarket buy

I don’t believe in mass-produced, cheap wine, so I definitely don’t buy wine in a supermarket. If something is that cheap, somewhere in the world someone or something is paying the price. Also, support your local wine shop!

My most embarrassing moment at work

Once I told one of our guests that she looked just like this actress from one of my favourite Hollywood movies. ‘Actually, that was me,’ she said. Oops! I had no idea she was originally Danish. I kind of floated away from the table but we had a good laugh about it together later that evening.

Pet peeve

Some sommeliers tend to give extensive tasting notes, which I find kind of a turnoff – they can come across as imperative, and I prefer drinking with an open mind. For this reason, we do not do this at Noma.

My death row food and wine pairing

Yvon Métras Fleurie and dim sum.

Best food and wine match at noma

Currently, grilled artichoke hearts with a sauce of walnuts and truffle with a blueberry vinaigrette and wild-foraged greens from the beach, paired with an aged sake called Time Machine by Kinoshita Brewery on the north coast of Kyoto, served at room temperature.

My fallback quick after-work meal

I make a Greek salad pretty much every day and occasionally I will bring back an open bottle from a pairing, like a light red or a Georgian white – but, truth be told, I rarely drink at home.

Wine I’m most proud of on my list

During our time doing pop-ups in Japan (where I made an all-Japanese wine and sake pairing), we became closely connected to Beau Paysage, a Yamanashi domaine making beautiful wines. We have managed to bring them back to Copenhagen and I’m proud to serve them.

The biggest surprise on my list

We get our fair share of sceptics afraid of the 100% natural wine list – I love surprising them with wines that might be recognisable to their palate but made without being filtered or heavily sulphured. It opens their mind to the broad spectrum of natural wine.

Wines I’d order on a restaurant list

Get a Coteaux Champenois when you see it. With warmer vintages have come beautiful still wines from Champagne that go so well with food. Also, your sommelier’s eyes will likely instantly turn heart shaped when you ask them about it.

Wine region I’m most excited about

For our upcoming Los Angeles pop-up I have just spent a month travelling around California, researching a wine region I never really had any interest in. I was lucky to meet some very special people making great wine in a market flooded with overly extracted oak bombs.

Wine style I really don’t enjoy drinking

I know they’re all the rage, but aromatic skin-contact wines like Muscat are not really my jam.

Best value wine region right now

Catalonia, Spain, and the other side of the border in southwest France.

My favourite wine region to visit

Jura is like home. I love being in Arbois and having lunch at Le Bistrot des Claquets with my friend Florien Kleine Snuverink of Les Bottes Rouges (yes, the same Florien I worked with 16 years ago in Amsterdam) or sitting on the terrace of the Domaine de la Tournelle winebar/shed. Otherwise, Georgia, for all the reasons imaginable. What a place. Wow.

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Winemaker Daniel Estrin came to make the wines and manage the estate vineyards at Oregon’s Cristom after a nine-year stint working in California alongside Sonoma County legend Ted Lemon.

He grew up in the Willamette Valley, but didn’t discover wine until he left. Having spent the early part of his career as a kind of adventure surf and snowboard bum, Estrin is now equally passionate about growing and crafting some of the country’s top Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Estrin is a seriously strong cyclist with a penchant for custom steel bicycles, of which he owns four – a mix of mountain and gravel bikes.

On a recent visit to the estate, he led me on the most unusual vineyard tour I’ve ever had, as we descended the vine rows at top speed on two of his mountain bikes.

Afterwards, he explained how he was introduced to cycling and the impact it has had on his wine-growing and -making…

A taste of freedom

‘Without a doubt, getting a mountain bike was the best thing that came out of my bar mitzvah,’ said Estrin.

‘I now had my own “wheels”. I always had a lot of freedom growing up, but this opened up a much wider area to explore. I could ride all over town and explore the surrounding farmland, but most importantly, I was introduced to a whole new subculture.

‘To say that I was hard on that first bike would be an understatement. The Bianchi Ocelot only cost a few hundred bucks and was not designed for the rigours that I put it through.

‘This inevitably led me to the local bike shops, and one in particular took me in. Santiam Bicycles employed a slew of young guys who took me under their wings and showed me how to work on my ever-broken bike, and would give me rides to local trail systems.’

The adventure continues

‘Cycling has brought many things to me throughout my life. Bikes allow me to have space for myself as an individual and have the time to actively meditate on my life.

‘For me, there is no better therapy than time in the saddle. While I treasure adventures with friends, when I am out by myself I find a place to process life.

‘I have ridden all over the desert of Utah, across Oregon, and this year I rode solo up into Washington state – from our home in McMinnville up through the coastal mountains and over the Columbia river to the base of Mount Adams.

‘The route was an amalgamation of other routes that I found through cycling groups and recommendations from pals. I saw all sorts of wildlife and many different forests and ecosystems, and met a few characters.

‘All in, the ride was about 500 miles [800km] and just shy of 50,000 feet [15,240m] of elevation gain in six days. I carried all my gear on the bike, allowing me to have the ability to camp whenever I felt like it. The self-supported aspect of the trip gave me freedom from any tether of obligations – just me and the bike.

‘A few weeks later, I came back to the Washington wilderness for some mountain biking with a couple of friends. This allowed me to see the same area from a more rugged vantage point.

‘We rode along ridgelines and traversed across different drainages to access some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever witnessed.

‘Time on my bicycle gives me the space to reflect on the vineyards, wines and the people that I work with. Riding through the vineyards of the Willamette Valley gives me greater appreciation for the elevation, microclimates and aspects of the sites.

‘I am grateful to be able to intimately engage with the landscape in which we grow the grapes that become the wines we pour ourselves into.’

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Born in South Korea, sommelier Minyoung Ryu worked in fine dining establishments around the world before coming on board at Bali’s Potato Head luxury resort in 2023 to set up a natural wine bar and restaurant, Dome. It is a world away from the more traditional establishments she had spent her career in previously, and she has relished the challenge of bringing an outsider’s perspective to pairing wines with Indonesian flavours. 

‘My parents are very open minded, and gave me the freedom to make decisions by myself. In South Korea most people go to university after high school, but as I didn’t know what I wanted to study, I felt that university would be a waste of money. But not going to university is seen as a failure in our culture. I was sick of people sharing their opinions on my life, so one night I packed my bags – in the middle of the night – and left.

‘I remembered a peaceful place I had seen on a documentary, in a quiet mountain area. I travelled there and found a guesthouse. I didn’t realise at first, but it turned out to be a volunteer project, with a lot of European visitors. We shared meals and sometimes people would bring wine. One person had brought homemade wine from their grandparents. It was the first time I felt truly curious about wine, not just as a drink, but as a story, like history for me, as culture, as a connection.

‘Later, I returned home for Christmas and went to buy a cake at a big market. I happened to stop by the wine section, and someone recommended a wine to pair with the cake. It was Moscato d’Asti, a dessert wine, and something I’d never tasted before. I’d always thought wine was dry and bitter, but this was sweet, aromatic, and completely unexpected. It was a small moment, but it really changed my perspective. That experience made me start thinking seriously about wine as a possible career path.

‘Korea had introduced Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) courses a few years previously and, with the encouragement of my mother, I gained my Levels 1 and 2. My instructor then told me that Koreans were able to spend six months in the UK without a visa, so I decided to travel there to study for my Level 3. Before London, I volunteered at Brühler Hof, a small, family-run, organic winery in Bad Kreuznach, Germany. It was my first real experience in wine and agriculture, and it had a big impact on me.

‘In London, I worked as a helper at the Decanter World Wine Awards judging week. I found it inspirational. I watched the judges and I thought, “I want to be able to do that”.

I got my first job as a junior sommelier in London, and after the UK I went to work in Australia, in Margaret River and in a restaurant in Melbourne, followed by a restaurant in Hong Kong – where I was the only non-French employee. It was very fun; I ate a lot of cheese! In Hong Kong I worked with a number of different restaurants and cuisines – Middle Eastern, Southern Italian, French and Chilean. During the pandemic I worked on a new opening in the Maldives, as well as at Raffles where I learned about the operational side of restaurants.

‘All of these experiences expanded my understanding of how to pair wine with a wide range of flavours and cultural influences. I thought about taking a break, but I was contacted about the role at Potato Head! It was a role where I could have a lot of creativity and freedom. I look after the wine menus for all the venues within the resort – each restaurant is different and has a list that reflects that, and the lists get a refresh every six months.

‘Whenever I come to a country, I think it is important to understand the nation, the people, what is eaten, enjoyed – the flavours. I often speak with my junior, who is from Bali, about flavours and spices. As a Korean I am used to spices used in fermentation, whereas Balinese spices are fresh, so can be paired with wines that are juicier and fruitier – with Primitivo, for instance, which is one of the easiest pairings, and a wine that international guests are familiar with. There are also a lot of smoky flavours in Indonesian cuisine, as ingredients are cooked over charcoal, so that is another element to think about.

‘We do have an Indonesian wine on the list. I was doubtful, but when I tasted it, I thought “Woah! It really tastes of Bali: galangal ginger, some spices, ylang ylang fruits, floral characters, and a touch of orange citrus. But also, a minerality and straightforwardness. I believe, because the Bali soil is very volcanic, it is driving these flavours into the glass. I knew that the wine would pair easily with the cuisine. It’s made from the Moscato grape, naturally fermented, unfiltered and with no added preservatives, the maker’s approach to winemaking very much part of the story of the wine.

‘My focus nowadays is on engaging with guests. I see my job as a curator, which includes sharing stories of how winemakers produce their wines. It’s about choosing wines that make sense for guests, and communicating about those wines. It is about taking into account what guests feel comfortable and familiar with, while reflecting the dishes and bringing out the Indonesian and Bali flavours. It’s a balancing act, but one that I love.’

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Born in a village near Perugia in Umbria, twin brothers Augusto and Alberto Gherardi head up the prestigious education programme at the Gordon Ramsay Restaurants group, and run their own wine communication business, The Wine Jokers, studying for the Master of Wine qualification in their spare time. Winners of the 2025 Sommelier Edit Excellence in Education award, the unstoppable pair took time out to speak to Decanter about their own journey and what’s hot on the Umbrian wine scene.

Alberto: ‘We don’t come from a wine background. Our family is in fashion – they have their own brand, Alessandro Gherardi, and also work for labels such as Ferragamo, Dior and Louis Vuitton. So many people are surprised when we tell them we decided to follow a completely different path. We started from scratch.’

Augusto: ‘Wine has always been an important part of our lives, though, with classic Italian family meals around the table. Growing up, our grandmother introduced us to the world of (often bretty!) diluted wine – that’s also why we both still love a tiny bit of brett in wine!’

Augusto: ‘In our work as wine education managers, we run WSET courses (Levels 1-3) for staff and for the public, and the company has also just opened a site at 22 Bishopsgate, London, that focuses more on cooking classes, corporate masterclasses and events. It was great to win the award for Excellence in Education – it’s a reminder we’re going in the right direction.’

Augusto: ‘I think it was our curiosity and willingness to expand our horizons in the world of wine that brought us to London. [The brothers interned as sommeliers for the opening of five-star boutique hotel The Londoner.] We believe that this city is still the most dynamic market in the world for wine. In just one shop here, we were able to select 90 wines for our MW exam preparation – in Italy, this would have required months of research.’

Alberto: ‘We share tips for facing the challenges [of the MW programme]. We make the most out of this bond that we have… we always have a partner to study with, which is important. It’s like playing tennis: one of the biggest challenges is finding a person to play with – we don’t have that challenge!’

Augusto: ‘What makes Umbrian wines distinct is our indigenous grape varieties and the fact that Umbrian winemakers are following more organic, natural and sustainable practices. Some extraordinary orange wines from Trebbiano Spoletino are being made, and producers are seeking greater freshness and lower alcohol levels while looking to alternative vessels such as concrete and clay eggs.’

Alberto: ‘Umbria needs to move away from the misconception that it is simply a “cheaper Tuscany” and create its own identity, focusing on making Sagrantino more approachable and earlier-drinking. Another central selling point for Umbria is its lakes: our lake fish pairs well with Grechetto- and Trebbiano Spoletino-based whites. Wine alone is powerful, but if combined with unique regional traditions, it can really make a splash in the market.’

Augusto: ‘My perfect regional wine and food pairing? Strangozzi pasta with butter and white truffle (many of the best actually come from Umbria), served with the Cardissa Chardonnay from boutique winery Morami. It’s well balanced and made in a rich, creamy Burgundian style, with some new oak fermentation and maturation. It’s perfect with the intensely aromatic white truffle and the buttery character of the strangozzi.’

Alberto: ‘I’d go for a very traditional Umbrian Easter dish: grilled lamb with Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG from Paolo Bea – a very good artisanal producer. The lamb has enough structure to match the wine’s glycerin viscosity and waxy texture. The passito style’s residual sugar counterbalances the lamb’s earthy flavour and the smoky, charcoal character.’

Alberto: ‘Beyond Umbria, I believe Lambrusco is very exciting. It ticks all the boxes for market trends and Generation Z’s preferences: bubbles, rosé styles and lower alcohol. Some producers are also focusing on premiumisation: Cantina della Volta is great for bottle-fermented styles.’

Augusto: ‘The Valle d’Aosta in Italy’s Alpine far northwest is one to watch. It has a similarly continental climate to Umbria [and produces] authentic, terroir-driven wines – exciting things happen at high elevation. There’s lots of freshness, vibrancy and fragrant notes in the wines. There is great value and versatility to be found.’

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Isa spent more than 12 years as head sommelier at the Fat Duck Group, working alongside chef Jonny Lake. In 2019, he and Jonny teamed up to open Trivet (now two Michelin starred), and they have just launched Labombe by Trivet at the COMO Metropolitan London. In 2022, Isa was awarded the Michelin Sommelier Award for his work at Trivet.

My first memorable wine experience

Oddly, it was probably the best wine that I have drunk and will ever drink: a 1969 Chambertin from Burgundy’s legendary Armand Rousseau, back in 2002 or 2003. It was an out-of-this-world experience and one I would never want to try to repeat, just in case I was disappointed. I had bought the bottle for £50 with an ullage that was well below the neck. I drank it with friends at the Arches wine bar in London, along with some other great bottles.

My go-to everyday wines

I am a big fan of white wines from Campania, Italy, in particular Greco di Tufo. I love the freshness and purity; it’s amazing with light Mediterranean food.

My favourite supermarket buy

I have not been to a supermarket over the past few years for anything. I buy from independent shops. I also believe supermarkets should not be able to sell wine, but that is a long debate.

My most embarrassing moment at work

I once decanted a bottle of Tignanello into a decanter and as I approached the table to serve it, the handle of the decanter broke and the decanter fell on the floor. I was left there holding a handle and standing in a pool of red wine.

Pet hate

The obsession of wine professionals with a single grape variety at the expense of everything else. There are some wine professionals who only ever seem to drink and recommend Pinot Noir, Chenin Blanc or Riesling. The wine world has so much to offer – it would be a sad day if it was one day reduced to just a handful of grape varieties or regions.

My death row food and wine pairing

I think that, being from Turkey, it may actually be something other than wine, such as a glass of raki with a plate of lakerda – a salt-cured dish made from bonito.

Best food and wine match at my restaurant

The pigeon with persimmon dish at Trivet is simply amazing with northern Rhône-style red wines. The spices in the dish and the black fruits and black pepper notes in the wine are a wonderful combination.

My fallback quick after-work meal (and wine match)

I used to really enjoy making sage and butter pasta and drinking it with Chianti. Now I try not to eat or drink after work! It’s not easy though.

Best buy on my list right now

On Monday evenings we do a selection of very keenly priced wines at Trivet that changes weekly and these offer incredible value for wine lovers.

The wine on my list that never fails to surprise guests

Domaine Jean-Yves Devevey, Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune Champs Perdrix (on the list at £120). It’s an amazing quality for the cost, where Burgundy prices are going silly. This remains amazingly approachable.

Wines I would avoid ordering on a restaurant list

I don’t like to order wines that are too generic and made in enormous quantities. I drink for pleasure and also look for some kind of cultural interest. Wines with a human story excite me more.

Wine region/style I’m most excited about at the moment

I am very excited about the wines from countries such as Greece, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. They have so much to offer, and it’s only just beginning – although technically it began thousands of years ago, of course!

Wine style/grape that I don’t really enjoy drinking

I don’t tend to enjoy mass-produced wines, just as I don’t enjoy mass tourism. I think that they are both damaging and prefer to stay away.

Wine region/style that offers the greatest value for money right now

There is a lot to be said about value versus price, and it is very subjective. There are many regions offering incredibly good value – among these I think Spain has to be top of the list. You can find excellent value in pretty much any region in Spain.

My favourite wine region to visit – and favourite destination while I’m there

I love visiting Italy – any region, at any time of year is always a delightful experience. When I find myself in Piedmont, I love visiting La Ciau del Tornavento – a wonderful restaurant that has a fabulous wine list.

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Norton’s collaboration with New Zealand’s Invivo Wines is celebrating its 12th vintage, and he was recently named Grape Ambassador to Marlborough. He shares his winemaking journey, his love for Sauvignon Blanc, and what he’s learning along the way.

‘My interest in wine was purely recreational until I started stand-up. A glass of wine became my prop. It told the audience, or at least I hoped it did, that I was relaxed and having a good time, so maybe they should too. When I got my TV show, the glass of wine came with me. Becoming a wine producer never crossed my mind until Invivo got in touch.

‘I ended up working with [Invivo co-founders] Rob [Cameron] and Tim [Lightbourne] because they asked. But I suppose the reason I said yes was because I liked their style. They read somewhere that I enjoyed New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and asked if they could supply wine for our green room. It was only a few bottles but it meant that back home in NZ they were able to say “As drunk by – insert name of star.” That was smart, inexpensive PR and more importantly, no other winemakers had thought to ask. I drank and enjoyed their wine, so saying yes to a collaboration was an easy decision.

‘Really, that first year, it was like vanity publishing. I just got to see my name on a bottle. It was only going forward that I wanted to be more involved, and have meaningful input into the wine that was carrying my name. Of course I couldn’t have guessed that we’d still be going all these years later and enjoying the huge success that the wines have achieved. The relationship works because it never feels pressured. I only put my name on products that I would drink.

‘Blending day over the years has become more streamlined as Rob, Tim and I have developed a shorthand. We taste around six samples individually and then begin to blend based on those first impressions. This is the bit that continues to astonish me. The alchemy of adding even a tiny amount of one sample to another can completely change the wine. A nose will appear, a long finish will disappear, the feel of the wine in your mouth can go from full to thin. I love it.

‘I’d love to say that my palate has evolved over the years of working with Invivo, but I’m not sure it has. I still like what I like.

‘I’m not quite sure when I discovered New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs but I’m guessing it was in the late 1990s. I really had very little label loyalty. It is interesting to me how much the style of New Zealand wines has changed over the years. The wines aren’t stuck in the past and seem to constantly evolve to keep up with the drinking public’s changing palate. I find it extraordinary that such a huge industry can be so light on its feet.

‘Getting any award is lovely, but becoming an ambassador for Marlborough grapes really did feel like an honour. This year was the first time I had actually managed to visit the area and I absolutely loved it. The weather was perfect and it felt surreal to be driving along seeing so many familiar names dotted along the side of the road. I’ve always loved Marlborough wines, but drinking my Sauvignon Blanc in the South Island sunshine, I must admit it tasted better than ever.

‘The most surprising thing I’ve learned, and this will make me sound supremely stupid, is how precarious the wine business is. This billion-dollar/pound industry is at the whim of so many variables. When did it rain? Was there enough sun? Have the vineyards got sufficient labour for the harvest? I think because of the way we purchase and consume the product, it is easy to forget that grapes are a crop like any other and subject to all the vagaries of agriculture. You would think that having grown up in Ireland I might have understood that a little better.

‘It sounds ridiculous but I do drink my own wines more than any other. They are the bottles that are always in my kitchen. When I’m in a restaurant I might splash out on a nice Sancerre.

‘If I didn’t drink and enjoy my wines I wouldn’t have my name on the bottle, it’s as simple as that. We always say that someone might buy one bottle of my wine out of curiosity, but they only buy a second bottle if they enjoyed it… it is the quality of Invivo that makes the brand a success. And while my name may attract some drinkers, it probably repels others.

‘Hopefully in 10 years’ time no one will remember who Graham Norton off the telly was, but they’ll still be drinking and enjoying my wines!’

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The recipient of this year’s Decanter Hall of Fame Award is a man who steadfastly beat his own drum until the rest of the world fell in with his rhythm – or at the very least stopped to listen.

Possibly the world’s most outspoken defender of terroir, authenticity and ‘true’ wine, Nicolas Joly – dubbed the ‘godfather of biodynamics’ – is known for his rousing rhetoric and strongly held views.

Biodynamic trailblazer

Since 1977, when he took over the Loire valley’s most iconic domaine, La Coulée de Serrant, he has pioneered biodynamics in his vineyards, demonstrating the potential of these methods and bringing others around to his way of thinking.

Leading by example, he has encouraged winemakers the world over to focus on the health and sustainability of their vineyards and to produce wines with a genuine sense of place.

At 80 years of age, Joly’s passion for his subject remains undimmed.

Within minutes of my arrival at his home, he’s leaning in to explain: ‘You see, you have two sorts of wine: those that are impeccable, achieved by aesthetic surgery, but have no charm, and those that are achieved by biodynamics – which is what the place wants, playing the song that the place wants to play.’

These are themes – working with nature and adopting a hands-off approach in the cellar – to which he returns frequently, along with multiple references to the more esoteric ideas of the founder of biodynamics, Rudolf Steiner.

Ahead of his time

These days, organics, biodynamics, natural farming and sustainability are words on everyone’s lips, but it wasn’t always so. Joly was a man well ahead of his time.

When he started his wine-growing journey, few people were talking about organic viticulture and biodynamics was virtually unheard of.

In 1970s France, agrochemicals were much more à la mode than planet-friendly solutions, as grape growers sought an easier life than their parents.

Joly recalls that when he was at school, the children of farmers were threatened with having to work in the vineyards if their grades were poor. ‘Working in the vines was a dreadful thing; and 50-60 years ago, the vine was not bringing in much money,’ he says.

Joly’s own upbringing was rather more comfortable. He was born and raised in Angers, where his father was a surgeon. He spent his youth learning how to hunt, shoot and fish with his father and brother.

He recalls: ‘I landed in a family where there was a passion for nature, but a passion that is probably not viewed well in the world of today.’

Although he has long since ceased to have any interest in hunting, he says that nevertheless, this early experience gave him a deep understanding of nature.

La Coulée de Serrant

His parents moved from the city to nearby rural Savennières when they bought the Château de la Roche aux Moines in 1962.

It seems the vines that came with the property were of little interest to the family, even though they included the historically lauded La Coulée de Serrant, a single-vineyard appellation that has been in continuous production since the 12th century.

During the 1930s, French journalist and gastronome Curnonsky (Maurice Edmond Sailland) ranked it as one of the top five white wines in France (the others being Yquem, Montrachet, Château-Chalon and Château Grillet).

Hugh Johnson wrote that this vineyard ‘epitomises the exceptional situation which makes outstanding wine’, while Alsace wine-grower and fellow biodynamic practitioner Olivier Humbrecht MW says: ‘The energy of the place is amazing.’

See articles on previous Decanter Hall of Fame Award recipients

Returning home

The appeal of what would become a lifelong project wasn’t immediately apparent to the teenage Joly, however. While his mother oversaw the vineyard operations, he left for business school in Paris and the US, and fell into a career in finance.

He worked in New York and London before deciding to return to Savennières. ‘For no reason, I just quit the company,’ he says, ‘and this is why I’m a great, great believer in fate.’

He went to Bordeaux to study oenology and then came home to focus on the family’s Chenin vines and running the business.

Despite the exceptional site, at that time the domaine was running at a loss. ‘I didn’t care at all,’ says Joly. However, when he took over the vineyards, he describes his dismay at being persuaded to buy weedkillers for the first time, in the name of progress.

‘I realised immediately that I was destroying the place,’ he says. ‘The colour of the earth was changing. The ladybirds were no longer there. I was destroying the secret life of the place.’

He soon turned his back on chemicals in search of a more natural approach.

Spiritual awakening

Happening upon a second-hand copy of a book by Rudolf Steiner, he ‘almost immediately’ decided to move the estate to biodynamics.

Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and spiritualist who founded this system of organic agriculture, as well as the Waldorf school movement and the esoteric spiritual movement anthroposophy.

A series of lectures he gave to a group of German farmers in 1924 forms the basis of biodynamic practice. ‘I knew nothing about biodynamics,’ says Joly. ‘[The decision to embrace biodynamics] was absurd, because it was a decision from nowhere, but my life has been made of decisions from nowhere.’

He trialled Steiner’s methods on a small scale for a year or two, quickly became convinced of their merits and took the plunge with the entire estate, which has been fully biodynamic since 1984.

Joly describes the work of Steiner as ‘a huge gift for my life, which has been based on these foundations since I was around 30 years of age’.

Nicolas Joly at a glance

Born: 23 August 1945, Angers, France

Education: L’Institut Supérieur de Commerce, Paris (1968-1969); MBA, Columbia University, New York (1969-1970); oenology, University of Bordeaux (1977)

Career: Investment advisor at Morgan Guaranty Trust in New York and London (1971-1977) before returning to La Coulée de Serrant

Family: Two children, Virginie and Vincent; three grandchildren

Interests: Anthroposophy, meditation, his grandchildren, gardening, spending time in the mountains

Leap of faith

Initially, however, his ‘decision from nowhere’ was difficult for the family. ‘We were treated like a sect for seven years because we were in biodynamics,’ Joly says.

‘My parents received a phone call telling them to be careful because their son was destroying their vineyard. It was a very negative pressure. You see how powerful the farming industry is.’

Undeterred, Joly continued, and he soon started to attract the attention of several high-profile wine-growers who, after visiting his domaine, began to adopt similar practices in their own vineyards.

A notable visitor in the early days was Lalou Bize-Leroy, who at the time was co-managing Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

‘I don’t know why she came, but she immediately got what biodynamics was about and started to use it at Romanée-Conti,’ Joly says. ‘This was a huge, huge change because this was the best of the best [converting to biodynamics].’

Other early adopters included Noël Pinguet (Domaine Huet), Anne-Claude Leflaive (Domaine Leflaive), Michel Chapoutier (Maison M Chapoutier) and Marc Kreydenweiss (Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss).

At the turn of the century, with two decades’ experience of biodynamics under his belt, Joly founded the Renaissance des Appellations (Return to Terroir).

Early member Olivier Humbrecht MW recalls: ‘Nicolas had contacted a few wineries around France. He had famous names from the start. We began with around 20 members in 2001, but it became bigger very quickly because of his aura.’

Spreading the word

The association now numbers more than 230 wineries worldwide. Joly’s daughter Virginie has taken over most of the day-to-day work of the association (and the domaine), but Nicolas remains as spokesperson and leader, regularly addressing audiences of trade professionals, winemakers and consumers with his unique brand of fiery rhetoric, championing wines that express their origins and equally vehemently opposing ‘technological’ wines, which he claims all taste the same.

One might imagine that Joly has used this platform to promote his own domaine, but nothing could be further from the truth. He appears to have little interest in talking about his wines or, for that matter, himself.

Decanter World Wine Awards Co-Chair Ronan Sayburn MS says of Joly: ‘He’ll talk about anything but his own wines.’

Indeed, halfway through our interview, Virginie arrives carrying a tray of bottles and glasses. ‘He always forgets,’ she says. ‘Yes, I always forget to bring the bottles to taste,’ Joly agrees, before turning his back on the tray to continue to expand on the point he was making.

‘The purpose of Renaissance was to help small wine-growers who were just starting out. They needed money and I wanted them to stay in their place to express their deep link to the earth, rather than changing themselves into marketing agents.’

Everything has been done on small budgets, but the group organises regular tastings and has travelled the globe together, spreading awareness of their wines and biodynamics.

Passionate belief

While some of Joly’s thinking can be considered esoteric – he freely espouses the importance of elemental beings to plant growth, for example – he has the ability to hold the attention of a room with his passion for whatever he’s talking about.

Beyond the loftier ideas, he offers practical examples of what’s possible.

Humbrecht says: ‘Wine-growers are very pragmatic. If we change something, we want to see results – and this is independent of believing that there are elves in the vineyard. When you cook a steak, you don’t know exactly what is happening, but you can become better. And this is what Nicolas is great at: he allows people to write their own recipe.’

While Joly’s own beliefs appear immutable, he isn’t interested in imposing them on those who have no interest in hearing them. ‘I do respect the freedom of everyone, so I think people should do what they feel they have to do,’ he says.

‘My advice is that if someone has a deep interest in biodynamics, come here. I always take the time to explain things in depth, or to tell you my experience. I would feel that I’m not myself if I don’t do it.

What others say…

The sommelier

Ronan Sayburn MS, Co-Chair of the Decanter World Wine Awards

‘He is an enigma, and his wines are, too. He’s fascinating to listen to, and because he is such an extreme personality, he drives things no one else would. He’s a very curious guy. He can walk into a vineyard and talk about the energy. As a sommelier, I always wanted to recommend Coulée de Serrant because when it’s great, it’s magnificent.’

The colleague

Olivier Humbrecht MW, owner of Alsace biodynamic estate Domaine Zind-Humbrecht

‘I am totally in his philosophy: if you want to make a great wine, it has to have a sense of place, a taste of terroir. Nicolas was the first person who knew how to speak about biodynamics and make it fun and interesting. He has an inner energy that makes people want to drink better wines, and wines with character. And he brings the younger generation of wine-growers in. You can listen to him ten times and he will always have something new to say and it’s always absolutely fascinating.’

The new neighbour

Ivan Massonnat, owner of neighbouring biodynamic estate Domaine Belargus

‘I am a fan of his personality. He is open and sharing and has had a very positive impact on the region. He put Coulée de Serrant back on the map – and there has been nothing more significant for the subsequent rise of the Anjou region than this. We owe him.’

The biodynamics expert

Monty Waldin, consultant, journalist and author of Biodynamic Wines

‘Nicolas always knew that the future was sustainability and has always remained firm in this view. Some think he’s a mad fanatic, but he’s not. He is also generous in sharing his thoughts with his colleagues. Today, the themes of climate change and respect for the planet are everywhere, but at the time [he started out], it was much more difficult explaining it to people.’

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Haisma worked for a decade at Yarra Yering winery in Victoria, Australia before moving to Burgundy in 2007. His micro-négociant Gevrey-Chambertin wines quickly found a cult following and his success enabled him to acquire two hectares of vines in Gevrey and plant a further 2ha in Mâcon. He also makes wine in Cornas in the northern Rhône, and helped to launch Dagon Clan winery in Romania.

Yarra Yering’s owner and winemaker Dr Bailey Carrodus loved Shiraz, and my love for the grape was born there. You come to love a grape for many reasons, and ours was through drinking it – we drank it regularly and widely, including the great French, US, South African and Australian expressions.

When I moved to Burgundy in 2007, I asked a guy I knew in Cornas whether he could find me some fruit – that was the start of my French adventure with the grape. I’ve been working with the same grower ever since. An Aussie not making Shiraz is an Aussie lost! My first vintage (2009) was made from barrels that I bought and blended. The first vintage that I vinified myself was 2010.

Fast forward to 2016, when I planted my first vines in Burgundy – in the northern Mâconnais. My intention was to grow Chardonnay and I did, and it’s lovely. But a little corner took my fancy, and I decided to plant 0.3ha of Shiraz there. I didn’t foresee the complications and furore it would lead to. But let’s shake the tree hard and see how the apples fall – I like being naughty. The land was AOC Mâcon but the Shiraz has to be labelled as Vin de France, so I had devalued the land. I decided to call it Shiraz rather than Syrah because it’s so outside of what is normal that I don’t see the point in using the French term.

I’m never going to be a seventh-generation, seven grand cru-owning Burgundian. And the Shiraz project will be my most enduring, lasting piece of work – even though it’s a tiny project alongside my main business. The first vintage of the Shiraz was 2022, and it included 10% Gamay in the mix, from a separate 0.2ha plot of Gamay. You can see it a bit in the character of the wine, but the Shiraz is dominant. From the 2023 vintage onwards, I’ve gone with straight Shiraz.

When you carry out an experiment in science, you make a hypothesis and then prove or disprove it. My question is, ‘can we consistently ripen Shiraz in this northern climate?’ It might take a lifetime to answer it, but when we ask a question in viticulture, we don’t look for an immediate response. Planting decisions don’t realise the benefits for 20 years. By ripen, I mean phenonically ripen, not sugar ripen – we’re never going to get 14% here. But the warmer climate means we can let the fruit hang for longer, allowing flavours to develop.

I’m not suggesting that Gevrey-Chambertin is replanted with Shiraz – we could never afford to do that. But should Burgundy be looking at other varieties, in corners of the region that are becoming too hot? Look at what Bordeaux has done. One of the most strait-laced wine regions there is, yet they’ve ripped up the rule book and allowed struggling vintners in Entre-deux-Mers to earn a living by growing a whole bunch of different varieties. Let the young decide what they want to grow, make a new version of Bordeaux and target it at younger drinkers. In Australia, obviously, you plant what you like, when you like, where you like, as long as the label on the bottle tells you what’s inside.

Locally, the response to my planting of Shiraz was figuratively pitchforks at the end of the road. And bewilderment. We used the traditional trellising system for Shiraz, so the vines even looked out of place. Local growers said we’d never sell it and it would never work. As for the consumer, we see two different reactions: there’s the traditional Burgundy drinker who won’t look beyond Pinot Noir, and the inquisitive, open-minded drinker who loves the idea.

I don’t need approval from anyone – the authorities can’t do anything about it once you’ve declassified the land. But I’m disappointed that the move hasn’t started a serious conversation – it’s like talking to a brick wall. Climate change is the elephant in the room. We’re taking an awkward step into the unknown, and we can’t ignore what’s happening around us.

Imagine trying to plant Shiraz in Burgundy in the 1940s, ‘50s or ‘60s – it would’ve been a complete waste of time. What did the best northern Rhônes taste like back then? We don’t have the same soils here – our soils are not granitic – and we’re not trying to make Côte Rotie, but climate change might mean that the Shiraz we’re making in Burgundy today achieves the alcohol levels of the wine being made in the northern Rhône back then.

Our job as grape growers is to adapt – we have to learn to work in a changing environment. It’s a climate of extremes now, and soft intermediary ground is a rarity – it’s either sodden and wet or brutally dry. The more gentle, rhythmic weather patterns have gone. That said, climate change is not my primary motivation for growing Shiraz in the Mâconnais – I did it because of the emotional pull to the variety, and for the pure excitement of going against the grain. We’re not selling the wine cheaply, and obviously it’s important that the wine is good – otherwise the exercise is a failure.

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Her career in wine has included retail in many US states, importing/distribution/brokering, winemaking in New Zealand, Oregon, Spain and Greece, collaborating on more than 100 episodes of podcast series Scores & Pours, teaching courses, consulting, training and working as a sommelier. Her current home is New York, where she serves as director of wine at The Carlyle, a Rosewood Hotel.

My first memorable wine experience

I was a young 17 years old and was elected to help my parents pick out a Christmas wine, which was strange as my family didn’t really drink wine (I’m convinced I’m the milkman’s daughter). I selected the first Aussie Shiraz from one of many stacks. At the dinner table, my mum allowed me to taste it and wow, was it awful! I still remember that flavour. No more than half a bottle was consumed so I snuck it up to my room post-dinner to taste later, as I had heard that wine needs to breathe. Two days later, I took a sip. It was even worse than the first time. From then on, fermentation intrigued me beyond belief. Five years later, I would enter the wine business.

My go-to everyday wines

Anything interesting. I often get asked what’s my favourite wine. My response is always: ‘The next wine I haven’t tried.’

My favourite supermarket buy

Honestly, I haven’t bought wine from a supermarket in ages. I like to support local wine shops, but if I waltzed into one right now, I’d look for something Austrian. Their wine laws are as strict as they come, so there’s a little less funny business and value can be shockingly good.

My most embarrassing moment at work

In a casual, award-winning restaurant in Minneapolis. I opened an Austrian sparkling rosé and the pressure was so high that the cork went flying across the entire dining room. A guest caught it. Everyone in the establishment erupted with laughter and praise. It was pretty epic.

Pet hate

When guests are closed to exploring something new. In our business, we get to try hundreds of wines a week. To this day, I can’t understand why anyone would want to drink the same wine on every visit.

Death row food and wine pairing

I could say Champagne but that seems too predictable, so I’ll go for Sherry, paired with foods that are practically designed for it: olives, Serrano ham, cheeses, gazpacho…

Best food & wine match at my restaurant

Our Brussels sprout salad with strawberries is incredible served with a light grower Champagne from, say, Moussé or Charlot.

Fallback, quick after-work meal (and wine match)

Sautéed vegetables, a quick egg situation, cheese and bread. Wine match: something new I can ponder while winding down.

Most proud of, on my list

The minuscule producers that we’ve discovered: Vinyes Tortuga (Empordà), Scar of the Sea (California), Domaine Nénu (Collioure), Ochota Barrels (South Australia) and many more! Surprise on a list is everything and many guests comment on how many discoveries are on our list. That tickles my heartstrings.

The wine on my list that never fails to surprise guests

Vinyes Tortuga’s Doolittle. What is Barbera doing in northeastern Spain? People see the unexpectedly deep, unfiltered rosé colour while learning that a barrel was not topped up for more than a year, thus the wine is graced with all the flavours that accompany ageing under flor. Knocks out guests every time.

Wines I’d avoid on a restaurant list

Defective natural wines or big-volume wines. I usually describe what I’m not looking for and let the sommelier or bartender or server choose something I haven’t tasted.

Wine region/style I’m most excited about at the moment

Any. All.

Wine style/grape I really don’t enjoy

There is no such region or grape, really. A new producer, grape, vintage, expression… I love exploring it – someone plus nature made this! However, there is neither time nor liver capacity for soullessness – regardless of how coveted or expensive or rare the wine may be.

Where to look for best value right now

Canary Islands. The Loire Valley. Australia. US$40 wine from these regions would cost you $80-plus elsewhere, for the equivalent quality.

Favourite wine region to visit I love visiting Spain and the Mediterranean islands. I feel at home there and find the most transparent, interesting new expressions of what terroir can be on each and every visit.

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As Dr Green prepares to launch a series of medieval supper clubs (complete with ye olde food and wine pairings and a lute recital), he shines a light on the wine culture of the Middle Ages and where you can still find hints of it today.

Dr Green is the author of Shadowlands: A Journey Through Lost Britain, which chronicles forgotten corners of British history, including its medieval wine trade. Find out more about his tours and events.

‘Not many people know that so much of London’s prosperity today was built upon the medieval wine trade. It was one of the city’s most valuable commodities but its story is now quite overlooked.

‘I like to remind people as we walk past banks and phone shops that these streets were once lined with vineyards.

‘The most remarkable thing is the sheer amount that people drank. In the 12th to the 14th century, wealthy people would easily be drinking five pints of wine a day – 3 bottles by today’s standards. And the level of alcohol wasn’t lower – it was higher if anything. So they were jousting, going to war and making big political decisions all while being three bottles of wine down. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it was such a cut-throat world.

‘Even babies were given wine. There’s a record of one outgoing wet nurse writing to the new wet nurse to say: “If you can, try to wean the baby off wine soup”.

‘It makes sense when you think about what the water was like back then. The River Fleet used to run red with blood on slaughter day. People knew drinking the water could be a death sentence.

‘There wasn’t a proper way of preserving wine then so it was poured away into the streets after a year when it became undrinkable.

‘The punishment for serving wine that wasn’t fresh was severe. On the tour, we pause at the spot outside St Mary-le-Bow Church where vintners caught selling old or bad wine were tied to a stake and surrounded by “vile minstrels” (basically musicians playing horrifically out of tune). The awful music would gather a blood-baying crowd, then the Lord Mayor would appear, waterboard you with your utterly putrid wine and smash the bottle over your head. A sweet revenge for a sour wine. They liked poetic justice back then.

‘In the wine taverns, there were giant jewel-encrusted pig troughs on the tables filled with wine. You’d scoop it out with coconut shells. The shells were so valuable they were locked up in the tavern at night. If you’ve ever drunk red wine out of a coconut, you’ll know it gives it a lovely texture. It’s a great trick for dinner parties.

‘It wasn’t just red and white wine back then either. You had all the colours of the rainbow and drank the colour of wine that matched your social status. Blue wine was the most elite – reserved for kings, archbishops and aristocrats. It was filled with ultramarine dye but the dye was deeply toxic so mostly they’d hold it to look important while drinking something else.

‘Next best was green wine – which was white wine mixed with grass. Then black – basically very strong red wine. White was for the lowest classes because it reminded people of the tears of sinners. They thought it might imbue them with sin.

‘On the tour, I always stop at Cleary Garden – London’s only medieval-style vineyard that has vines growing in it today and which doubled up as a plague pit. In the Middle Ages there were vineyards all across southern Britain because of the climate. From about 900 to 1350 AD Londoners were living through what’s called the Medieval Warm Period – it was probably hotter then than it is today so grapes could be grown in places where now it isn’t feasible. The warm period was replaced by the Little Ice Age from about 1350 so by around 1400 almost all the vineyards were gone.

‘During the plague they didn’t have enough space to bury bodies so it’s likely that lots of City vineyards became plague pits. After the plague ended, people didn’t really use the grapes from the plague pits – they thought they were tainted. But, by the next generation, they were up for grabs again.

‘I think the tour works because you get not just the medieval history buffs but also the foodies and people who are interested in wine. Plus, both medieval history and viniculture can seem quite unapproachable. We strive to make it fun. We have live actors who leap out and drink the wines we talk about as we walk. I think of it as immersive history. There’s a sense perhaps that you can behave badly on the tour or just get blind drunk.

‘There are definitely places where the spirit of excess and extravagance that permeated London’s Middle Ages wine culture lives on today. I don’t like seeing betrayals of that spirit, like when people are stingily pouring wine with those shot glass measures. But in places like Le Beaujolais [a wine bar between Soho and Covent Garden] they pour it right to the brim if they like you – it feels incredibly medieval.’

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Tucked between northern Italy’s mountains and shaped by Alpine winds, Tenuta San Leonardo produces some of the country’s most refined wines in one of its most biodiverse landscapes.

I recently sat down with Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga, who now leads the estate, to talk light, legacy, elegance, and what it means to build a garden just for winter.

Tasting note of the recent 2020 vintage of San Leonardo below

Victoria Daskal: You’re located in quite a striking part of Italy. Can you describe San Leonardo’s setting?

Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga: We’re exactly halfway between Verona and Trento, in the Adige Valley. It’s a narrow strip — only 800 metres wide — framed by mountains that climb to nearly 2,000 metres.

We’re low in altitude, just 120 metres above sea level, but the vertical contrast is dramatic. Lake Garda nearby gives us this thermic wind, Ora del Garda, which blows like clockwork every afternoon. It keeps the air moving and the vines healthy.

VD: Does that geography shape the wines?

AGG: Completely. The valley runs north to south, and the mountains shade us for hours. We lose about three and a half hours of direct sunlight daily. There’s no golden hour at San Leonardo — no Instagram sunsets.

But we gain something more important: indirect, luminous light, plus dramatic thermic shifts. The air floods cold at night, and by day it warms quickly. It’s excellent for photosynthesis and freshness. Our wines tend to have low alcohol, but a lot of flavour concentration.

VD: How would you sum up your terroir in three words?

AGG: Extreme. Hydrated. Bright. The extremes come from our thermic range—lush summers, hard winters. With big drops in temperature between day and night.

We have abundant mountain water that filters through the rocks, emerging like mineral springs keeping the vines and vegetation hydrated. And the light is intense, though indirect. A quiet brilliance.

VD: Your family is renowned for their gardens. When did this passion start?

AGG: Gardening is almost as important to us as winemaking. My great-great-grandfather was inspired by La Belle Époque in Paris. He built Villa Gresti in the Liberty style in the 1870s and surrounded it with exotic gardens.

Later, my grandmother created a remarkable garden near Rome called La Landriana with Russell Page, one of the most important British garden architects. That shaped my father, and it shaped me.

VD: What about at San Leonardo? Are you working on any new garden projects?

AGG: Yes — a winter garden. Our region is stunning from April to November, but winter is harsh, brown, silent. I want to create a space that blooms even in January, full of fragrance and shelter for birds.

It will be open-air but enclosed by earth—like a round bowl carved from the land. Inside we’re planting Calycanthus, hellebores; plants that are beautiful in the cold. A garden for a sombre season.

VD: Let’s talk wine. You joined your father at San Leonardo at a very young age. What was your vision then?

AGG: At the time, the world wanted big, extracted, oaky wines. I was 23 and thought I knew better. I pushed my father to make San Leonardo more ‘contemporary’. I even suggested blending Teroldego into the flagship wine, as part of the ‘glocal’ (global and local) trend.

He looked at me and said: “You’re an idiot. Go back to the office.” And he was right. He had a very clear vision of what a wine was. Elegance was always the main drive of his wine production.

VD: But you did make important changes eventually — particularly with white wines.

AGG: Yes, in 2011 I launched Vette, a Sauvignon Blanc. It’s vibrant, floral, and stainless steel–fermented with bâtonnage to give it texture. Later we introduced Riesling, which is more gastronomic. That one sees a year in 900-litre Stockinger oak barrels with bâtonnage. I love a bit of oak in whites — it gives finesse. But I don’t like to feel oak in reds.

VD: Are those white wines from your own vineyards?

AGG: Currently, we buy the grapes from seven high-altitude plots, between 200 and 700 metres. Land is impossibly expensive here — half a million euros per hectare, if you can even find it.

Most plots are 1.5 hectares, and 95% of the wine in our region is made by two huge co-ops. But we are in the process of buying a small vineyard of Riesling that also contains some rows of Pinot Bianco.

VD: You’ve been shifting toward organic farming. Where do you stand now?

AGG: We’re fully certified organic. We use many biodynamic practices too, like moon cycles, but I wouldn’t say we’re fully biodynamic. The reds can’t be certified because we still buy some grapes, but the philosophy is there: treating the vineyard as a living thing.

VD: Besides moving to organic, and introducing white wine, what other major changes did you make at the estate?

AGG: I changed the way we sell our wines. My father had one distributor for the whole of Italy. Today, we have 123 agents. It’s much more work — small orders, direct to restaurants, not big pallet drops.

But it creates relationships, and those matter. Fifty percent of our wine now stays in Italy. The rest goes to 67 markets — US, UK, Switzerland, Germany… even Kazakhstan. I also have hopes for selling to Lebanon and India.

VD: What’s next on the horizon for San Leonardo?

AGG: Sincerely, I don’t want to grow San Leonardo more than it is already. Actually I reduced the size, the production is more manageable and sustainable. We can concentrate on our identity and vision.

Tasting San Leonardo 2020:

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In 2015, Kawai founded luxury wine bar La Terre before leaving to focus on his wine consulting business. Named Best Sommelier of the Year three times in the Singapore World Gourmet Series Award – in 2013, 2017 and 2019 – Daisuke has been inducted into the same event’s Hall of Fame for Best Sommelier. @daisuke_kawai0109

My first memorable wine experience

It was around 30 years ago and I was a young child. After an argument with my mother, I stole and opened a bottle of wine from our fridge at home – and proceeded to finish more than half the bottle, on my own. (I tried to finish it all, but couldn’t manage it, thankfully!) I don’t remember what the wine was, but I remember that it was a white wine, made in Japan, and I remember that to me it tasted dry and bitter. That was my very first wine experience.

My go-to everyday wine

Shaw & Smith Sauvignon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills in Australia. Fruity, juicy and pure, with intense, fresh, grassy and citrus aromas. Still not bored after drinking it for more than 25 years!

My favourite supermarket buy

Kendall Jackson, Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay from California. Perfect balance of fresh and tropical fruits, with a kiss of vanilla from light oaking.

Most embarrassing moment at work

I find it deeply embarrassing when I cannot catch a guest’s eye before they actively seek assistance. This is tied up in my philosophy of service and hospitality. Our primary function is to provide service to our guests – even before our function as a wine professional. We should anticipate and provide for our guests’ needs before they have to look for someone to ask.

Pet hate

Laziness. All sommeliers and other waiting staff should pay attention to every detail of everything, for every second during service, giving 100%.

My death row food and wine pairing

Of course Champagne! Laurent-Perrier’s elegant Grand Siècle Itération 20 – this iteration is old and very hard to find, as the current release is Itération 26. Paired with sushi, as it is my country’s traditional dish.

Best food and wine match at my restaurant

A simple Sherry, Bodegas Barbadillo Pastora Manzanilla Pasada en Rama, with aged jamón Ibérico bellota. The wine has the perfect balance of freshness and yeasty depth, and brings out the jamón’s umami character. Heavenly.

My fallback quick after-work meal (and wine match)

Asian-style noodles with Tiger beer, since I am in Singapore!

Wine on my list I am most proud of

Château Figeac 1977. I had two bottles in stock, one of which a regular guest ordered and shared with me. I will always recall the intense aromas of rose petals, black fruits and aged tea leaves. Charming acidity, a velvety texture and a long finish. I brought some back from the château when I visited.

The wine on my list that surprises guests

Les Arums de Lagrange, a white wine made by Bordeaux’s Château Lagrange. Sauvignon Blanc-dominant, blended with Semillon and Sauvignon Gris, it’s beautifully balanced and has floral, citrus and vanilla aromas with a fresh texture. Guests are often surprised that dry white Bordeaux can be so good.

Wines I would avoid ordering from a restaurant list

Older vintages of white wines made for drinking young. Unfortunately, not all wine lists are rigorously managed, and sometimes white wines that are past their best are still in stock and on the list.

Wine style I’m most excited about

Franciacorta from Italy. These traditional-method DOCG sparkling wines come in different styles, but you don’t see them a lot as they aren’t widely exported. This applies especially to the Riserva bottlings, which are a must-try for their biscuity, buttery, nutty, amazing autolytic character.

Wine region that offers the greatest value for money

Still in Italy, Alba in Piedmont. Barolos and Barbarescos made by lesser-known producers can offer great value and enjoyment. But simple Barberas can also be delicious – medium-bodied wines with good acidity that can be enjoyed with friends and paired with so many dishes.

My favourite wine region to visit

It’s not a single region, but I’ll say England. I visited Ridgeview in East Sussex in 2023, Black Chalk in Hampshire in 2024 and Gusbourne in Kent in 2025, and am now looking for another vineyard to visit in 2026! While I’m in the UK, I always try to get to La Trompette in west London.

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Her passion for horses began at the age of six after her babysitter took her for a ride. She was hooked, spending every free moment at the barn. By 10 years old, she was participating in dressage competitions.

Dalla Valle’s initial disinterest in wine was understandable. ‘You’re entrenched in the industry, and as a rebellious kid, you think, “This can’t be my destiny.” Turns out I was wrong,’ she says, laughing.

It felt personal as she watched world-class equestrian centres such as the Silverado Horseman’s Center and Wild Horse Valley Ranch close, turning into wineries as Napa boomed through the 1980s and ’90s. Her parents, Naoko and Gustav, were part of that wave, opening Dalla Valle Vineyards in 1986 just off the Silverado Trail, near Oakville. In 1987, the year she was born, they planted a 2ha plot of Cabernet Sauvignon and called it Maya’s Vineyard.

They crafted the legendary 1992 Dalla Valle Vineyards Maya, their flagship blend, from that vineyard. The wine went on to earn 100 points from Robert Parker in 1995, the year that Gustav passed away. Naoko has continued to operate the business.

Being no stranger to chasing a dream, Naoko encouraged her daughter to do the same. ‘My mom has always said, “This is your one life, and you should do what you want with it. Do something that makes you feel fulfilled and gives you a sense of purpose.”’

Route back home

Dalla Valle took her mother’s advice and explored, pursuing a degree in international relations before picking up a harvest gig that solidified her love of wine. She came to realise that both winemaking and riding required a commitment to technique that she thrived on. ‘Dressage is highly technical,’ she says. ‘And winemaking mixes science and artistry with a high level of technicality.’

She decided to travel the world, earning wine-related Masters degrees from Cornell University and Bordeaux Sciences Agro before making wine in Bordeaux and Tuscany. Then, in 2017, her hard work landed her the role of director at the family winery; in 2021, she was appointed winemaker.

Commitment to success

Today, Dalla Valle pursues both dreams. She competes regularly and trains five days a week with her chestnut Dutch Warmblood Jeronimo. Her joy over Nimo is palpable: ‘Just tell me when to stop talking about my horse,’ she says with a chuckle.

Dalla Valle is typically at the barn by 6am; she describes her mornings as a form of self-care. ‘Horses can pick up on any distraction or emotion you bring to the ride,’ she says. ‘It forces you to clear everything and focus on the task at hand.’

She brings that clarity to her day job, which she jokingly calls chef d’equipe, a term from team dressage to describe the manager who prepares each rider for success. ‘It’s my job to ensure everyone has everything they need to do their best,’ Dalla Valle explains. ‘There’s no way we can excel at this level of farming and winemaking without them.’

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Equipped with a degree in viticulture from Oregon State University and several years experience in the wine industry, Daenitz founded wine photography and marketing company Craft & Cluster in 2019.

‘My original ambition was to be a photojournalist. I wanted to be the photography version of Andie Anderson from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I wanted to be Annie Leibovitz, I really admire her work. I went to school in Pasadena and took a couple of photography courses but I found that the LA photography scene was a little toxic. I was looking for a job that would be a bit more collaborative and I found the wine industry. I started studying wine and viticulture and finished my degree in 2013.

‘I was working for a vineyard management company, Coastal Vineyard Care Associates, and they asked me to start a social media account for them. I dusted off my old camera and started taking it out into the fields, photographing everything that was going on. If I saw a cool insect when I was doing my pest scouting rounds, I would take a photo of it. If I saw the crews were weeding or tilling, I would take photos and post them on social media. The winery clients I was working with started noticing and asked if I could do that for them.

‘My mentor, Francesca Lindley CFO said you have something here and you would do really well if you wanted to pursue this. It put the worm in my head.

‘I left my full time job in the January and started Craft & Cluster in February 2019. The name came from a for fun Instagram account that my husband and I started to share photos of the wine, beer and spirits we were drinking. I appropriated it for the business.

‘We manage social media for six wineries. We do consulting for a couple of wineries as well. We have some one-off wineries we work with for photography, once or twice a year. I would say we work with 30-40 wineries in an average year.

‘I work in the Santa Ynez Valley but I’m only about an hour from Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo where I go frequently. I also do some work with Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries, getting to explore other wine regions has been really special. Two years ago I had the opportunity to photograph The Women in Wine Expo at Balfour in Kent.

‘I think that the beauty of the wine industry is that people really care to work with each other. A rising tide lifts all boats. I feel that’s a philosophy most wineries live by. I think wineries need community, that’s the entire point of wine.

‘I’m part of a group for women working in wine in Santa Barbara County which created the annual Women Winemakers & Culinarians Celebration. In Santa Barbara County we have the highest number of women winemakers per capita than any other wine region and we wanted to celebrate that. It’s a dubious thing to celebrate because it’s still only 20% compared to men, which is really sad for me. It’s a thing to be proud of but I wish that we had more. But every year we’re getting more and more and more and I think that’s due in large part to the annual event and to the exposure and opportunities women are getting.

‘I wouldn’t be where I am without these women, it’s as simple as that. It would have been much harder to achieve what I’ve achieved without them backing and supporting me. The vast majority of clients I’ve gained are because of women who are part of that group.

‘Pinot Noir at Midnight wouldn’t have happened without Jessica Gasca of Story of Soil. She hired me to photograph the harvest that evening and I wouldn’t have been out there in those conditions without that.

‘I’m proud of all of my work, my clients validate it every day by continuing to work with me and that means a lot but it also means a lot to have third party impartial judges [for the Wine Photographer of the Year award] look at your work. So being able to win in this category with such a prestigious award is really special and validating.

‘One of my clients, Foxen (where I had my first winery job back in 2010) hire me now as a photographer. Last year they were picking well into sunrise and they have these really sandy soils. When you’re walking you put your foot down and it’s like moondust, like gravity doesn’t exist for a minute. The vineyard workers were walking back to me down the row and all I could see was their silhouettes through the dust. The way the light was coming through in the sunrise was so beautiful. It looks like a photo of a band.

‘The last year or so I’ve been using film again which has been a lot of fun. I think that film photography and wine have a lot in common, they both require art and science combined to make them happen – alchemy, it’s magical and special. There’s a grittiness and romanticism to it, they work really well together.

‘I’ve been toying with the idea of a coffee table book or photobook or a zine for a really long time. The focus will be on women in wine, not just winemakers but also viticulturalists, tasting room managers, leaders, any woman doing any job in wine, I want to photograph them and show what they do, behind the scenes, tell their stories.

‘Looking to others for inspiration, in wine it’s helpful to look at other wine photographers but even more important to look outside of the subject you’re photographing. You look at people doing similar things too much and you get ‘house palate’, when you’re only tasting wines from the winery that you work for, you get stuck and you don’t see the variety and the creativity that’s out there in the world.

‘The last thing most winemakers want is to be photographed. If you can get out into the field with them and have conversations with them about their craft and speak from a place of knowledge, they feel a bit more comfortable and confident when they’re having their photograph taken.

‘You can absolutely succeed [in wine photography] coming from the point of a consumer’s perspective but if you really want to get in with the down and dirty with the winemakers you need to have some experience. That might be working a harvest or just going out and being out there frequently and seeing what it takes to bring a wine from field to table.’

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‘Helping with the Domaine Evremond acquisition in 2015 changed my career. Taittinger’s UK importer referenced our company by name in the press release that went out to wine media, and Pierre-Emanuel Taittinger gave a speech at Westminster Abbey where he thanked people important to the deal, including my firm. It created a wave.

‘At the time English wine was still the underdog of the sparkling wine world. People in the know were aware of the quality of the wines, and of the potential. But for a brand like Champagne Taittinger to buy land in the UK was a mass-market news story, a landmark event that cemented in a public way the fact that English wine was very good.

‘The site in Chilham, Kent suited their needs perfectly. They are evangelical about chalk, and it has the right chalky soils. It has high growing-season temperatures, and low rainfall. And it was a freehold acquisition.

‘Until the late 2010s, your typical buyer of an English vineyard had enjoyed a high-paying City career, and wanted to retire to a vineyard in the country, as a passion project. Then in 2018 I noticed the types of buyers were changing.

‘I was selling a vineyard for an English winery, when I was approached by a fund specialising in luxury assets. I realised there was a massive opportunity in English wine and that I needed to upskill. I took myself off to do an MBA, so that I could advise on M&A-format transactions – and it was the best business decision I ever made. These were an emerging market at the time, but are now more common than land and property transactions, and I’m lucky to be in the middle of it all.

‘Any successful M&A deal needs to be a strategic acquisition. The purchaser needs to have something they can bring to enhance the current status of the business. Take the acquisition of Bolney Estate by Freixenet, and that of Hambledon by Berry Bros & Rudd and Symington. In both cases, the purchasers provided fantastic new routes to market.

‘I never predicted that English wine would take off in the way that it has. I originally moved into land management because we have a family estate in Wales. I planned to get the training as a land agent then go home and run the family estate. But I found a job that I was so excited about. I get to work with some of the brightest minds in the City who have moved into viticulture – Richard Balfour Lynn [of Hush Heath Estate], for instance.

‘We’re the only property firm with a dedicated vineyard team. Our main focus at the moment is trying to find good purchasers, to work out what they are looking for – to get under the bonnet of their search criteria – and then to match them with a business that would suit their needs, do the introductions, due diligence etc.

‘One way in which we find purchasers is to ask agents to forward on the details of unsuccessful bidders when a winery sells. There is a gentleman’s agreement between agents that we look after each other. We also have a mailing list detailing opportunities – it’s free to subscribe, but you have to declare whether you’re a wine producer, an enthusiast or a potential investor. We’re about to start a WhatsApp group for potential investors, too.

‘Location is obviously important to purchasers. Some owners don’t want to travel far from home. Others are keen on certain demographics of an area. Surrey, for instance, is a county with a high average household income – wineries here have a ready-made customer base on their doorstep. Others have romantic geological ideals, and want to focus on Sussex or Kent’s North Downs, perhaps. Sometimes people will compromise on location if they love an existing brand.

‘But there are other factors at play too. Some purchasers want to own a winery but not run it, which means focusing on those with a management team in place. Some purchasers want a cellar-door business, others don’t. It’s worth spending the time and money to get the right vineyard in the first place.

‘The main interest will always be in the southeast, and its fairly county agnostic – Kent, Sussex and Hampshire. Kent probably gives the most flexibility of the three, as it’s the driest of the three counties. There’s also interest in Crouch Valley, Essex, because of the interest around Burgundian-style still wine.

‘We acted for the vendor when California’s Jackson Family Wines bought there in 2023, the first US business to enter the English wine industry.

‘I feel like we have reached a plateau in land prices. Between 2018 and 2022, production increased massively, and land prices jumped from £15,000 to £20-22,000 an acre. Now all that fruit is coming onstream in wine. There was a massive crop in 2023, on top of generous vintages in 2018 and 2019. Many wineries are now looking to sell or rent vineyards, and there are good deals to be done renting vines from wineries looking to reduce their production.

‘There’s a current imbalance between overproduction and low sales, and we are helping wine producers to produce video content and embed e-commerce within that. One of the sales channels that is underutilised is e-commerce, and part of my job is to help businesses grow. Selling by e-commerce gives wineries a higher margin, and it’s one example of how the English wine sector is evolving.’

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After honing his skill in several revered institutions, including Thomas Keller’s Per Se, in 2011, Carlton joined The Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado, working his way up to wine director and overseeing the hotel’s 20,000-bottle wine cellar. He became president and CEO of Heitz Cellar in 2018. Today, he’s the CEO of Lawrence Wine Estates, a portfolio that includes Heitz and Haynes Vineyard in Napa and Château Lascombes in Bordeaux.

Carlton McCoy profile image credit: Mike Battey/LWE

My first memorable wine experience

It would have been at the Culinary Institute of America. My professor was [author] Steven Kolpan. He taught us about wine through anecdotes and historical events, not technical descriptions. This would forever frame my perception of wine.

My go-to everyday wines

It depends on my mood. Some nights, it’s Champagne… it’s often Champagne. Other nights, I bring home current releases from our wineries to experience with food.

Favourite supermarket buy

If I grab something quickly, it’s often a lighter white wine such as Chablis or Sancerre.

My most embarrassing moment at work

Where do I start? I once accidentally decanted a red Burgundy into a decanter that still held a few ounces of Coche-Dury Corton Charlemagne, creating the world’s most expensive rosé.

Pet peeve

It always bugged me when guests pulled up apps with scores. As a somm, scores are irrelevant. Somms taste and vet wines from all over the world. The point of a sommelier is to have a dialogue to find the best bottle for you, at a price you’re comfortable with.

My death row food & wine pairing

It would have to be a whole roasted Bresse chicken stuffed with truffles and accompanied by pommes frites cooked in duck fat, with great mustard. To drink with it: 1929 DRC Les Gaudichots [Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru], by far the most ethereal wine I’ve ever had. And it would take them a long time to find the bottle, which would extend my life!

Best food and wine match

I had an experience at Maison Pic [in Valence, France] many years ago. I have not been a fan of Rhône white wines, but this is their region and they had a great selection. I voiced my concern to the sommelier, and he smirked as if to say, ‘I’ve got this.’ He went on to pour me a Chave Hermitage Blanc with whipped brie scented with fresh vanilla. Insanity! Lesson learned.

My fallback easy after-work pairing

Our go-to quick meal is roasted chicken with a ton of butter and herbs, and a great salad. I can put the chicken in the oven, have a shower and a glass of wine and the chicken is ready. To drink with it, it’s often Champagne, as we always have a bottle in the fridge. If I am in the mood for red wine, we select a young, fresh red that doesn’t need time to show itself – a cru Beaujolais, Frappato or young red Burgundy.

Wine I’m most proud of on my list

When I managed the wine list at The Little Nell, I was blessed to be able to buy whatever I wanted. I was most proud of my domestic Cabernet list. I had amassed an insane collection of old wines that really shone a light on the ageworthy nature of the more balanced style.

The wine on my list that never fails to surprise guests

Guests were always amazed by the wines of the northern Rhône. In the US, many guests know Syrah through their experience with Aussie Shiraz, which is the polar opposite of northern Rhône reds. Everyone loves good Syrah when they get it in their glass.

Wines I’d avoid on a restaurant list

I don’t buy culty European wines when dining out. At this point, they are marked up the most, as allocations are small and, understandably, demand is high.

Wine I’m most excited about now

I have been drinking a lot more Bordeaux lately. I lean more towards the Right Bank these days: with a few years of age, the wines are ready to drink.

Wine style I really don’t enjoy drinking

I hate to say this, but I don’t enjoy hedonistic red wines: whether they come from Australia, the US or Spain, I just don’t find pleasure in them, and they don’t pair with food. Perhaps with a cigar?

Best value for money right now

I feel strongly that Bordeaux is the winner here. The quality of wine that you can get for $10 and under is unparalleled. And these are wines that can also be cellared. That’s rare to find in today’s wine world.

My favourite wine region to visit

Beyond Napa, where I currently work, I would have to say Austria. I adore great Grüner Veltliner, and the regions themselves are gorgeous.

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Super-premium whites, Primo Grande Cuvée and Rarity – both Platinum Medal winners at the Decanter World Awards and ‘100 pointers’ across the wine press at large – may be Cantina Terlano’s flagship wines, but delve deeper and you’ll find stunning quality and value throughout the entire portfolio.

This exemplary co-operative lies less than 10 kilometres west of Bolzano, regional capital of the Alto Adige in northeast Italy.

Notes and scores for six Cantina Terlano wines below

Michael Garner: Cantina Terlano’s white wines have extraordinary ageing potential and need time in bottle to develop, yet the reds are delicious to drink young. How do you explain this apparent anomaly?

Klaus Gasser: This is white wine country. We’re on the left bank of the Adige and growing conditions here are pretty much unique. It’s cooler and the soils have a much higher limestone content over the river.

The village itself sits in the crater of an extinct volcano with mainly sandy, fast-draining, siliceous soils over a bedrock of red porphyry.

We have a very particular microclimate, with huge differences between day and night-time temperatures governed by our proximity to the Alps and warm afternoon breezes which blow up from the south.

White grapes are planted at up to 900 metres, many on steep slopes. As a result, our whites demonstrate great nervosity and tension: marked sapidity and above-average acid levels promise great longevity thanks to the low pH of the soils.

Our legendary winemaker Sebastian Stocker was the first to recognise and start developing this potential. The reds, however, are mainly from lower-lying vineyards on the eastern side of the village towards Bolzano: they’re a very different proposition, though they can age quite well too.

MG: How do you highlight these very distinctive characteristics?

Rudi Kofler: It’s mainly the age of the vines: we use younger ones for our Tradition range and older for our Selection and Riserva wines. Our aim is to maintain fruit integrity and purity through to the bottle, so we avoid cold-maceration and aromatic yeasts.

We ferment the simpler wines at cool temperatures (around 18-19 ℃) in stainless steel, with up to around six months of lees ageing.

We prefer whole-bunch fermentation for the Selection range, and slightly higher fermentation temperatures with a mixture of large wood and stainless steel plus longer lees ageing, because the fruit is more concentrated.

MG: What about your background in wine?

RK: After studying agronomy, I worked at Cantina San Michele Appiano under Hans Terzer between 1997 and 1999, then moved to Terlano where Hartmann Dona was the head oenologist. He left in 2002 and I took over. The spirit of Sebastian Stocker lives on here, so I’ve followed in the footsteps of three great local winemakers.

MG: Can you explain a little more about the innovations Stocker brought in?

RK: Under his guidance the winery acquired its first stainless steel vats in 1977; they proved perfect for the singular kind of storage regime he was interested in and the effects of lengthy lees ageing in particular.

These days our Rarity wine is fermented and undergoes malolactic in large wooden barrels. It stays there for a year with regular batonnage and is then transferred to those original stainless steel drums and stored for 10-12 years – sometimes more – on the noble lees.

The wine is still turbid so we don’t stir the lees any further. People say that the yeast autolysis process is over after about four years, but we’ve seen how our wines go on developing long after that. Stocker laid the groundwork for us.

MG: How have the warmer vintages of the last decade affected the character of your wines?

KG: We’ve been lucky so far. The red wines have benefitted and have a much riper style. Overall there’s better phenolic maturity but also greater focus on getting the picking date just right to avoid over-ripeness.

The changes we’ve seen are more in terms of random patterns, hotter spells certainly, but seriously cold snaps and an increased danger of hail. But we’re already used to extremes here!

RK: Ironically, we were harvesting earlier in the first decade of this century than the second! In 2021 we picked our white grapes in October, about a month later than usual. But we don’t pick early for higher acid levels: our style is based on low yields of perfectly mature grapes.

MG: Finally the future. Which wines will carry the name of Terlano forward?

KG: Over time, Pinot Bianco, Sauvignon and Chardonnay have established themselves as the grapes that grow best here.

They work both as single varieties (eg Pinot Bianco for Rarity or Sauvignon Blanc for Quarz) and in combination (eg Primo Grande Cuvée or Terlaner Nova Domus).

Terlaner Cuvée, a blend of all three grapes, is actually the original wine of the area; varietals didn’t take off until the 1970s.

Factbox: Terlano

Founded: 1893 (as a cooperative)

Current members: 143

Hectares under vine: 190

White varieties: Pinot Bianco, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Gewürztraminer, Müller Thurgau

Red varieties: Lagrein, Pinot Nero, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon

Product ranges: In addition to Primo and Rarity, there are two ranges: Selection is the single-vineyard or Riserva line, and Tradition the introductory line consisting mainly of single varietals.

Annual average production: 1.5m bottles

Tasting Terlano: Six of the best

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