Wine regions

Sonoma Terroir

Andrew — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:49:15 +0000

There are many ways of understanding wine, but you’ve never really finished the job until you lace up a pair of boots and leave the car behind.

The Languedoc

Andrew — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:52:12 +0000

Stones, wind, silence.

In Praise of Retsina

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:40:26 +0000

It was almost fifteen years ago that I sat, eating soft-fleshed olives and briny feta, with Christos and Lambrini Lagelou. Midday was drawing on; it was the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

Chianti: Walking by Moonlight

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:38:16 +0000

The scene was a large London trade tasting at the Merchant Taylor's Hall: Bordeaux '88s, so far as I remember.

Château Faugères and the new Bordeaux

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:35:57 +0000

Bordeaux has changed more in the last twenty years than in the previous hundred, yet it still tends to be considered conservative, brahmin-ridden and sclerotic by comparison with the fast-moving south

Champagne: Twisting the Tiger's Tail

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:33:49 +0000

The bar in the Hotel Meurice was full of weighty African diplomats sinking whisky and muttering into mobile phones.

Bulgaria: Europe's Chile

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:32:03 +0000

The Bulgarians are justly proud that Dionysus, the god of wine, is ascribed Thracian origins.

In Praise of Burgundy

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:29:31 +0000

There, in the dock, stands the troublesome recidivist. Indicted, yet again, on a dozen counts. Arraigned before those who love her most.

Against All Odds: The Wines of Virginia

Andrew — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:25:35 +0000

There are three reasons for planting a vineyard.

Santorini: watching the birth of a terroir

Andrew — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:45:02 +0000

Few wines taste of disaster and catastrophe. I can think of only three. Two come from Savoie, where heavy rains in November 1248 dislocated half a mountainside. Millions of tons of rock sheered from Mont Granier, thundering down onto the village of St André and its neighbouring hamlets, turning them into a human and animal necropolis. The place was left to its ghosts for centuries, but eventually vines found their way there. Out of this terroir of the dead comes a pair of light, brisk, nettley whites: new life qualified by tart history.