As the English wine bandwagon trundles steadily onwards and upwards, attention has been shifting from sparkling wine onto still. While the quality of the fizz is no longer in doubt, many wine lovers seem to remain wary of the still wines. Perhaps they've been scarred by dodgy...
I had a fascinating trip to Australia at the end of 2018, in particular looking at the cooler climate regions like Western Australia, Yarra, Mornington and Tasmania. Australia has never made finer wines in a more diverse range of styles than now. It's a hugely exciting...
This was a fascinating panel tasting for Decanter back in January 2019 (published in the June 2019 edition). The focus was 'icon' bordeaux-style blends from South America. In other words, some of the continent's most expensive and highly vaunted wines based on Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec...
'Frustrating doesn't begin to cover it,' I write in this recommendations piece for Decanter, picking 30 Chilean wines under £25. On paper, this should be a straightforward piece. Chile is making heaps of fabulous wines at this price, as I know from my regular trips out...
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...
This panel tasting for Decanter magazine focused on Carmenere - a repeat of the exercise from 2017 yet with hardly more conclusive results. Carmenere is a Chilean USP and makes some fine wines there but you can't help but feel the best is yet to come....
In which Peter pens a profile of François Massoc, a most unusual Chilean winemaker of French extraction and with a passion for making ambitious, sometimes extravagant, always engaging wines. The piece features profiles of five winemakers by different writers: Fernando Mora MW (Bodegas Frontonio, Aragón) by...
When The Sunday Times Travel asked us to do a piece on our favourite wine destinations, our first thought was: hope they're going to give us lots of space. As it happened, they cruelly made us choose only six - three each. Peter plumped for Chile (Casablanca...
Space. That's where Paul Hobbs wanted to go, as an astronaut. Wine is where he ended up. Described by Forbes as, 'the Steve Jobs of wine', Hobbs is one of the best known international wine consultants, with the likes of Mondavi, Simi and Opus One on...
Pinot Noir in Essex?! Pinotage in Sussex?! It's all happening in English still wine at the moment. The sparkling wines of the UK go from strength to strength - and now they are being joined by a raft of still wines rapidly gaining critical mass and...