Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill 2012: Faithful ambassador of a great Pinot year

By Simon Field MW

There has been no shortage of anticipation trailing this launch, most specifically because 2012 has been pitched in Champagne as a Pinot Noir vintage par excellence, and, notwithstanding the House’s ornate reticence as to the precise blend, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill is often perceived to be the nec plus ultra of Pinot-dominated Champagne. We have… View Article

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Taylor’s Single Harvest 1961: Sixty shades of great

By Simon Field MW

The leading Port house has released the latest in its series of venerable Tawny Ports, perfect for those celebrating a special anniversary or birthday this year, but equally tempting for all wine lovers 1961 was not a “declared” vintage for Port, although the Single Quinta concept had already been born, as those lucky enough to… View Article

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Book Review: In Vino Veritas 2020: A Collection of Fine Wine Writing Past and Present edited by Susan Keevil

By Brian St. Pierre

Timely highlights of wine writing make a literary buffet on which to feast By now, in this plague year, most of us may be feeling more than a bit like the poor dupe in Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Cask of Amontillado,” walled into a wine-cellar’s alcove, maneuvered into claustrophobic isolation in an extreme of anti-social… View Article

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The Sideways phenomenon: Burgundy next

By Raymond Blake

With its relatable characters and universal concerns, the 2004 hit movie made a mainstream impression that no wine-themed work on the big or little screen has since matched “If anybody orders Merlot I am leaving.” That line, and the expletive-laden one that followed, delivered a sucker punch to the fortunes of Merlot, while providing a… View Article

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Louis Roederer Hommage à Camille Coteaux Champenois

By Essi Avellan MW

The first Chardonnay and Pinot Noir releases from a promising project raises the bar for quality in the rapidly growing Coteaux de Champagne still-wine scene In essence, this is a lab,” says Champagne Louis Roederer’s chef de cave Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon of the house’s new Coteaux Champenois project. “With these still wines, we seek to express… View Article

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Bouchard Père et Fils offers 1978 Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus Magnums

By Neil Beckett

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the purchase of the Château de Beaune, which houses the most exceptional collection of venerable Burgundy vintages, Bouchard Père & Fils is releasing 100 magnums of its iconic Beaune Grèves from a legendary year still at the height of its powers Even for the largest owner of grand and… View Article

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Private Somm offers wine lovers their own sommelier experience at home

By The World of Fine Wine Team

A new monthly wine-subscription service allows drinkers in the UK to benefit from the experience and expertise of some of the country’s leading sommeliers. Nicolas Pierron, former Head Sommelier of Jason Atherton’s City Social in London, and Sophie Picheta, on-trade fine wine sales representative for Lea & Sandeman Wine Merchants in the city, started Private… View Article

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Book Review: Tasting Victory: The Life and Wines of the World’s Favorite Sommelier by Gerard Basset

By David Williams

How a drop-out conquered the wine world It seems appropriate to begin a review of the memoir of one of the leading figures in the British hospitality trade with a bit of housekeeping. So, here goes: I can’t say I’ve come to this piece in a spirit of detached objectivity. For various reasons, reading Tasting… View Article

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Coates & Seely socially distanced private tours

By The World of Fine Wine Team

In response to the UK Government’s guidelines on the re-opening of outdoor hospitality venues, Coates & Seely has released details of socially distanced private tours of its vineyards and winery in Hampshire. The private tours for up to 12 people will include curated tastings of the sparkling wines with food pairings made from locally sourced… View Article

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Designer Richard Brendon, producer of the Jancis Robinson wine collection, launches #RaiseYourGlass charity campaign

By The World of Fine Wine Team

From September 4 until October 4, 2020, Richard Brendon will donate 10 percent of all online sales from his bone china, cut crystal, and Jancis Robinson wine collections from his online store to Hospitality Action and The Drinks Trust. Customers will also receive a 10 percent discount with every purchase. In order to receive this… View Article

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Fladgate, Noval, Ramos Pinto, and Sogevinus declare 2018 Vintage Ports

By David Williams

Some of the Douro’s biggest names have made declarations of classic and single-quinta Vintage Ports from a year of low yields and high quality A cluster of Port houses have waited for the traditional St George’s Day date to announce their releases from the 2018 vintage, with some shippers making a full Vintage declaration for… View Article

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Ornellaia 2017 Solare: A radiant new vintage

By Victoria Daskal

It has become a tradition, now 12-years strong, not only to describe each new Ornellaia vintage, but to sum up in a single word what makes it unique. Exuberance, Harmony, Energy, Equilibrium, Celebration, Infinity, Enchantment, Elegance, Essence, Charisma, and Tension is the roll call of essential ideas or qualities over the past 11 years. But… View Article

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2017 Sassicaia: Staying cool under the Tuscan sun

By Victoria Daskal

At the launch of 2017 Sassicaia and other Tenuta San Guido wines, Priscilla Incisa della Rocchetta explains why it does not reflect one of the region’s hottest-ever summers Rather than jumping straight to the wines, Priscilla took time to reflect on the history of the great Super-Tuscan. “Our grandfather was a very strong character. He wanted… View Article

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Book Review: Wines of the French Alps by Wink Lorch

By David Schildknecht

The perfect guide to an underappreciated region—and a model for others Enophiles familiar with Wink Lorch’s 2014 Jura Wine (and those who aren’t should be) will have been waiting with baited breath for her long-promised follow-up covering (to quote its subtitle) “Savoie, Bugey and beyond” and will expect to find an engagingly elucidated and beautifully… View Article

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Book review: Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes and the Fight for Real Cheese

By Elin McCoy

Fromage revolutionaries: A plea for artisanal cheese Here are three surprising facts I learned from Bronwen and Francis Percival’s fascinating new book, Reinventing the Wheel: First, there is such a thing as dead milk. (Hint: It’s pasteurized.) Second, my ideas about bacteria and sanitation are pretty much wrong when it comes to cheese. Third, real Camembert,… View Article

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Book Review: Red & White: An Unquenchable Thirst for Wine by Oz Clarke

By David Williams

Behind the scenes with a rare mainstream wine personality and “bloody good writer” Here are a few scenes from the life of the actor, TV personality, journalist, author, and wine taster extraordinaire Oz Clarke, as revealed in—and plucked at random from—the pages of Red & White: At the wheel of his old Porsche 911, “Michelin… View Article

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Book Review: Amber Revolution: How the World Learned to Love Orange Wine by Simon J Woolf

By David Schildknecht

Orange man on a mission: A clear-eyed, passionate view of a vinous phenomenon It was 2011, and Simon Woolf had just launched his web-based debut in wine journalism, The Morning Claret, dedicated to “celebrat[ing] the lesser known, the wilfully obscure, the under-appreciated nooks and crannies of fermented grape juice.” The glass he had just been… View Article

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Book Review: Wine Revolution: The World’s Best Organic, Biodynamic, and Natural Wines by Jane Anson

By David Williams

Dropping the polemic for the individual and pleasurable There is a moment in Wine Revolution that works like a pin in the great big balloon of hot air that has been expressed on the subject of organic, biodynamic, and natural wine. It comes as Jane Anson explains the process by which she came to include,… View Article

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Ornellaia 2016 Vendemmia d’Artista: Creative tension

By Victoria Daskal

Victoria Daskal looks at the latest offering in this renowned series of artist collaborations, revealed in a tasting with winemaker Olga Fusari As Ornellaia’s 2016 harvest transformed into wine in Bolgheri, the global conversation around women’s empowerment became ever more serious and tense. Allegations against Harvey Weinstein were coming to light, and the MeToo hashtag… View Article

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Book Review: The Symposion: Drinking Greek Style: Essays on Greek Pleasure by Oswyn Murray

By Stuart Walton

The preeminent paradigm of pleasure: How the Greeks liked to drink and think The fact that the symposion, the male drinking party that has come down to us through the texts of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and others, has become such a key feature of cultural studies of Greece in the archaic and classical periods is due… View Article

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Book Review: Sake and the Wines of Japan by Anthony Rose

By Antony Moss MW

Japan’s finest: An engaging, evocative, and authoritative guide to grape and grain Japan has been successfully raising its profile as a tourist destination, with visits tripling over the past five years, and this trend will surely continue with the upcoming Rugby World Cup (2019) and Olympics (2020). Over the same period, Japanese sake exports have… View Article

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Book Review: Burgundy: A Global Anthropology of Place and Taste by Marion Demossier

By Michael Edwards

Grace, balance, and academic rigor: An anthropologist’s Burgundy Burgundy is home to Marion Demossier, anthropologist and social researcher. This study took 25 years of ethnographic encounter with wine growers in the Côte d’Or. And so has been created a work that is a compelling narrative of a scholar deeply absorbed in her subject—one written with… View Article

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Book Review: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture edited by Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato (eds)

By Stuart Walton

A feast for the eyes and mind, if not the stomach There can be few more obvious intersections of the once isolated disciplines of food and popular culture than the Carl’s Jr company’s Most American Thickburger. In the 2015 TV ad, its potently nationalist credentials were emphasized through its advocacy by the model Samantha Hoopes,… View Article

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Book Review: Georgia: A Guide to the Cradle of Wine by Miquel Hudin and Daria Kholodilina

By David Williams

Beyond the romance: A practical and portable guide to Georgia in the round If there’s a strain of romanticism in the current Western infatuation with Georgian wine, it’s entirely forgivable. Whether it’s the unfathomably ancient (8,000-year) history of winemaking, the 520-odd indigenous grape varieties, or the use of that most fashionable new-old vessel, the qvevri, by… View Article

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Book Review: What Makes a Wine Worth Drinking: In Praise of the Sublime by Terry Theise

By David Williams

Grown-up wine writing full of emotion and exactly what we need In his early, pre-professional days as a wine enthusiast, working a menial job for the US Military in late 1970s Germany as he tried to break into music journalism, the wine books Terry Theise read “talked about vineyards, wine estates, all the things that… View Article

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Book Review: Making Taste Public: Ethnographies of Food and the Senses edited by Carole Counihan and Susanne Højlund

By Stuart Walton

An important vade mecum in the territory of taste The investigation of taste, in the context of aesthetic judgment as much as of the preferences we develop for certain foods and culinary systems, has to contend sooner or later with the latent paradox at its heart. In one sense, taste is famously subjective, immune to… View Article

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Book Review: The New Vignerons: A New Generation of Spanish Wine Growers by Luis Gutiérrez

By David Williams

At home with the viñadores: A vivacious guide to Spain An intriguing editorial decision has been made in preparing Luis Gutiérrez’s vivacious book for publication in English. Somebody at the publisher—or Gutiérrez himself—has chosen to render the original Spanish title Los Nuevos Viñadores not as (the admittedly altogether less mellifluous) “The New Winemakers” or (the… View Article

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Book Review: Where to Drink Wine: The Essential Guide to the World’s Must-Visit Wineries by Chris Losh

By Joanna Simon

A guide to drinking wine where it’s grown, to make it all “more, well… real” If you didn’t notice the subtitle, you might expect this to be a book featuring the world’s most striking restaurant and bar wine lists. The subtitle reveals its true calling: a traveler’s guide to wineries—indeed, “the essential guide” to “the… View Article

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Book Review: Wine—A Way of Life by Steven Spurrier

By Anne Krebiehl MW

A charmed life, entwined with the global world of wine The whirlwind that is Steven Spurrier’s autobiography Wine—A Way of Life is a dizzying sweep across his 54 years in the wine trade. It describes a world of wine that revolved around only the most classic regions of France, a smidgeon of Germany, and the fortified… View Article

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Book Review: Champagne: The Future Uncorked by Gert Crum

By Michael Edwards

A new classic for our age: Beauty and distilled wisdom Experience and memory really do count for something where aromas and flavors are concerned. These attributes have particular force in Champagne, for the wines are never that easy to judge categorically. The bubbles affect our perception of the aroma and flavor profiles, which can change… View Article

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Book Review: Vineyards, Rocks, & Soils: The Wine Lover’s Guide to Geology by Alex Maltman

By mikesummerfield

A question of geology: Not where, but why In today’s wine world, it is difficult to escape geology—well at least in the sphere of artisan wine, of wine of place, of terroir, of fine wine. One has barely stepped off the wine tour bus before being regaled with an account of the geology of the vineyard… View Article

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Book Review: The New Wine Rules by Jon Bonné

By David Schildknecht

Succinct and canny: Lessons for everyone in a breezy beginner’s guide What could possibly interest World of Fine Wine readers about a very slim wine book styling itself “a genuinely helpful guide to everything you need to know” and manifestly pitched at beginners, replete with colorful, stylized, page-sized graphics? Several things should. When, being perceived… View Article

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Book Review: Tasting Georgia: A Food and Wine Journey in the Caucasus by Carla Capalbo

By Nicolas Belfrage MW

This is a wine book with a difference. It encompasses everything you might wish to know about traditional*  eorgianviniculture but includes so much more: history, geography, architecture, tourism, ceramics—and food, food, food. The author (let’s call her Carla) has apparently taken a vow to eat and drink her way from one end of the land… View Article

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Book Review: Côte d’Or: The Wines and Winemakers of the Heart of Burgundy

By Michael Edwards

Striking literary gold: A dashing Dubliner’s learned guide to Burgundy Once met, Raymond Blake is one of those winsome characters on the international wine circuit you are unlikely to forget. I have known him for some time, and the dashing Dubliner always makes me smile—the well-cut jacket, the silk pochette, and, if memory serves, sporting… View Article

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Book Review: The Wines of Gala by Salvador Dalí

By David Williams

A surprisingly useful vinous worldview For all that they might debate the merit of his instantly recognizable work—how well his once-startling mix of classical draftsmanship and the uncanny has stood the test of time; whether it ever offered more than a shock value that drew rapidly diminishing returns the more it was reproduced and remade… View Article

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Book Review: The Dirty Guide to Wine by Alice Feiring (with Pascaline Lepeltier MS)

By David Schildknecht

A world tour of wine dirt with ample invitations for discovery and discussion Alice Feiring is familiar in anglo- and francophone wine circles for her self-described attempts to wrestle with the forces of industrialization, standardization, and manipulation, thereby helping to save the soul of wine. Her outlook borders on the Manichean but certainly reflects indefatigable… View Article

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Ornellaia 2015: Il Carisma

By Victoria Daskal

Presenting to a group of Italian and international press, Axel Heinz, winemaker and estate director, described 2015 as a “near-perfect, textbook-like vintage”: “This is a very rare vintage, as it seemed nearly flawless during the growing season. There was nothing outside of the norm in 2015, everything happened just as it was supposed to and… View Article

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Penfolds g3

By Ella Lister

Ella Lister discovers a unique new expression of Grange and is won over by an extra dimension that transcends the temporal limits of any single vintage Australia’s most famous wine producer, Penfolds has been making its cult cuvée, Grange, since 1951. Each of its 66 vintages has been aged in 100 percent new oak, apart… View Article

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La Fête du Champagne 2017 Comes to London

By Margaret Rand

Two days, in fact. The occasion was La Fête du Champagne, a celebration of the wines of the region organized by Liem and Daniel Johnnes. New Yorkers are familiar with this event: it’s been held each year in their city since 2014. This was the first time it has moved elsewhere, and so London, another… View Article

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Moët & Chandon 2009 Grand Vintage

By Alex Hunt MW

Alongside the vintage release, new glassware was exhibited which featured a flute shape with widened rim. “I need to fit my nose in the glass!” exclaimed Benoît. And on the current debate over whether regular wine glasses are better for Champagne, Benoît is not convinced. “Flutes are visual cues to order a glass of Champagne… View Article

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Veuve Clicquot’s New Extra Brut Extra Old

By Michael Edwards

Extra Brut Extra Old, a completely new cuvée created by Veuve Clicquot’s chef de caves Dominique Demarville and given its global launch in London on April 10, is a modern, intricate expression of the great house’s 200-year-old core heritage, stretching back to when the great lady herself began to plant her finest vineyards in 1818… View Article

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