The Road to Burgundy
14 May 2013 Filed in: Burgundy News & Views
I first met Ray Walker at Domaine Dujac in Morey-Saint-Denis during harvest 2010, Tuesday 28th September to be precise. I was talking to Jacques Seysses, patriarch of the domaine, and Walker was standing off to one side. Read More...
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ANZAC Dinner
25 April 2013 Filed in: Cellar Notes News & Views
What better way to celebrate ANZAC Day than by organising a themed wine dinner with wines from Australia and New Zealand, and the food giving at least a nod to the Antipodes? That’s precisely what I did last weekend. Read More...
Adolfo Hurtado: Pinot Master
30 November 2011 Filed in: News & Views Cellar Notes
I first met Adolfo Hurtado about 10 years ago and the passage of a decade since then has done nothing to curb the boyish, infectious enthusiasm he brings to his job as chief winemaker at Cono Sur in Chile. More recently we cycled through the vineyards as he explained his meticulous viticultural practices, which see flocks of geese marching imperiously around the vineyard and a dazzling blanket of cover crops planted between the rows of vines. Read More...
Wine Australia Tasting
In order to ‘prepare’ as fully as possible for last Monday’s mammoth annual Australian tasting I opened our penultimate bottle of Peter Lehmann Stonewell Shiraz 1993 and drank it with lunch the day before. In the days when you still could carry wine in your hand luggage my wife had brought home a couple of bottles, after playing at the Barossa Valley Music Festival about 15 years ago. Stonewell sits at the top of the Lehmann portfolio but a big vertical tasting conducted in Dublin last year by winemaker Andrew Wigan left some doubts as to how well it ages. Read More...
At Liberty
Discovering a new wine, something never encountered before, is always a bit of fun, especially if it has a good ‘back story’. Such was the case at yesterday’s Liberty Wines tasting in Dublin when Gregory Patriat of JC Boisset poured me a sample of his Mâcon-Igé, Château London 2009. Read More...
One Hit Wonder
19 January 2011 Filed in: Tastings
About 25 years ago New Zealand wine hit the world with a bang and it is not an exaggeration to say that in the process a new style of Sauvignon Blanc was born. Pungent, grassy and, some said, smelling of cat’s pee, it rapidly garnered legions of fans around the globe. It is still with us today but what was once a characterful wine has now slid into the cul-de-sac of caricature. This was confirmed for me at the recent Kiwi tasting in Dublin where the Sauvignons I tasted boasted eye-watering pungency and little else. But there were other treasures worth lingering over. Read More...
