(By Peter) I took part in a blind tasting in late September 2022 for Which? magazine to find some great value sparkling and red wines for Christmas. Full results are in the magazine or the PDF below. It's quite a handy guide if you're on the lookout...
Château Cheval Blanc 1949, St Emilion This isn't an attempt to grandstand. I was lucky enough to try this very special wine during a recent visit to 'The Fort Knox of wine', 100 feet underground in Octavian's Corsham Cellars, and I thought it would be interesting to...
Bollinger La Grande Année 2012, 12%, Champagne, France (£440 for 6 in bond, J&B) Watch out champagne lovers: 2012 is not a vintage to miss. And Bollinger’s La Grand Année (LGA) 2012 is a wine to buy, even if you have to beg, borrow or steal. It’s that...
Clusel Roch Traboules 2017, Coteaux Lyonnais, France (£12.67, Justerini & Brooks) Clusel Roch is an excellent producer best known for its excellent northern Rhône reds, including some delicious Côte Rôties. This Traboules is an intriguing and utterly delicious oddity. It's from the south of the little-known Lyonnais appellation, not...
Saint Veran Domaine Trouillet 2018, France, 13.5% (£17.99 or £15.99 when you ‘mix six’, Majestic) Majestic Wine has been through a pretty rocky patch of late and it’s left most of us wondering what exactly is happening with one of the country’s favourite wine retailers. The company first...
Maury Solera 1928 Cask 849, Les Vignerons de Maury, 17%, France (£19.95 for 50cl, Berry Bros & Rudd) The day after Kantar published research indicating a third of Brits wouldn’t countenance paying more than a fiver for a bottle of wine, I popped into Berry Bros &...
Ventoux 2017 Rémy Ferbras, France, 14% (£8.79, Waitrose) How’s about this, then? A mini Châteauneuf-du-Pape under a tenner. A fine way to warm the cockles and delight the taste buds during the winter season ahead. It’s a blend of mainly Grenache with 20% Syrah and 10% Mourvèdre, grown on...
Château Tayet Cuvée Prestige Bordeaux Supérieur 2015, France (£38.50, Private Cellar) Last week saw The Bunch’s annual tasting at which Private Cellar (new to the group) showed this magnum of Château Tayet. It's a blend of 55% Merlot with 25% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Petit Verdot, described as...
This fascinating tasting, which featured in the September 2019 edition of Decanter, took the temperature of Blanc de blancs sparkling wines from around the world. And would you believe it but top of the tree emerged...
Back in March I flew over to Bordeaux for a whistle-stop tour of some of the most eye-catching modern wineries in the wine world. This was a mini-reprise of my first book - Wineries with Style, an attempt to look at and talk about wine from...