I’d agreed to join an online tasting of canned wine, but was surprised to receive an instruction beforehand asking me to decant the wines into glasses rather than drinking straight from the can. “We also recommend opening the cans ahead of the session to help aerate the wine,” said the email.  Hang on, isn’t the whole point of this format to drink it straight from the can? A vinous grab-and-go? Apparently not, says Guy Palmer-Brown from Kiss of Wine. He sees their 250ml cans of wine as a great way for people to explore different grapes. “Smaller formats and discovery are unique parts of b ..read more

The wine world is full of people on a mission to ‘educate consumers’. It all sounds so dreary and formal… some wine drinkers just want to feel more confident when they go into a shop or order off a wine list. And if they can be entertained at the same time, even better. An educator might tell you that Grenache is prone to producing lots of sugar, which in turn can make generous wines with high levels of alcohol. But, on a Côtes du Rhône-sponsored podcast I recently listened to, host Joe Wadsack referred to Grenache in that part of France as like “Mister Blobby, broad and soft… a beanbag compar ..read more

It’s late morning on a grey, overcast day and there’s a solitary man sitting between a row of vines near the Hungarian town of Tokaj. He’s checking every grape and picking only those with the right amount of desiccation and “noble” rot, (botrytis cinerea). It’s a lengthy, painstaking job that can take weeks of passing up and down the vineyard for those perfect grapes – or aszú berries, as they become known (and first mentioned in the 16th century). Only the best will make it into Tokaji – the sweet wine from Tokaj. And if you want to know why it costs what it does, here is your answer ..read more

The first thing you learn on visiting the Sicilian city of Marsala – where the fortified wine hails from – is the phrase Before The British. There’s a clear diving line between what is legally defined today as Marsala and an older style of wine locally called “vino perpetuo”. Perpetuo is, as the name suggests, is a wine that appears to go on forever. It is kept in a barrel and topped up with new wine each year, when a quantity is removed. This is similar to the solera fractional blending system used for Sherry. The sweet, fortified wine that most of us know was “invented” in the late ..read more

What makes a wine great? Technically, it’s about attributes such as balance, complexity and ability to age. But this ignores the part that emotion so often plays. Where you were and what you were doing at the time you pressed the glass to your lips. That last night of a fabulous holiday, a birthday lunch with your closest friends or, in my case, a little moment of magic in a vineyard by the glimmering Sicilian sea. It wasn’t the most promising start, bumping along a dirt road to Nino Barraco’s Vignammare vineyard not long after a large, Marsala-fuelled lunch. With each twist and lurc ..read more

The glass of wine in my hand doesn’t smell particularly fruity. Or blossomy. What I am picking up is more dried grass and lemon peel. I take a sip. Yes, hay, some herbs maybe, raw hazelnuts, lemon peel and fresh bread. It feels dry, rounded but restrained. Not what I’d expect from a glass of Prosecco. Yet, according to producer, Primo Franco – of Nino Franco – this is exactly what his Grave di Stecca Brut 2009 is. Why? Because it is made from the Glera grape within the designated region for Prosecco. No matter that Primo took the Grave di Stecca vineyard out of the appellation system in 2009 ..read more

It’s a glorious early summer evening. I’m 28 floors up at Galvin At Windows in London’s Park Lane, overlooking the Queen’s back garden. And I have a glass of the newly-released Bruno Paillard 2002 Blanc de Blancs Champagne in hand. In a world where Champagne houses seem to fall over themselves to seduce wine writers around new releases, this feels intimate, stylish and relatively low-key. But then, should I expect anything less from a producer who is seen (or sees itself, according to a friend) as the Chanel of Champagne? Probably not. Our host for the evening is Alice Paillard, who works ..read more

The grey door to my hotel room didn’t have a number. Instead, a smear of orange paint. But that wasn’t the end to its quirkiness. Inside the vast, stylishly-furnished room was a table filled with figurines of scantily-clad ladies. Pictures on the wall were arty shots of women’s nether regions. And if you looked closely at the print on the headboard, oh my! The face of a woman having um, a good time. Welcome to Maison Fredon, in Bordeaux’s Rue Porte de la Monnaie. The former house of an 18th century grocer, it – and the shop/cafe downstairs (Au Comestible) – are owned by Jean-Pierre Xirad ..read more

They say you can tell a man by his shoes. So, what to make of wine consultant Olivier Dauga’s snazzy scarlet lace ups with lethally-pointed toes? Or cowhide slip ons? An ebullient maverick who’s a bit of a dandy, perhaps. Definitely not your usual Bordeaux man-in-wine, that’s for sure. Or at least what I had in mind prior to my visit. But that’s the point. For Olivier wants to demonstrate that there’s more to Bordeaux as a region than fancy châteaux and grand, unaffordable wines you have to wait decades to drink. “Two per cent [of the wines produced here] are grand crus which portray an untouc ..read more

“Are you selling wine?” inquired the customer. At first I was a bit puzzled. Here we were, standing in my three-week old wine shop, surrounded by bottles of the stuff. Then the penny dropped. What he actually meant was (after checking labels for prices): “Are you ACTUALLY selling any wine?” And to be fair, it made a change from the more usual comments about “being brave”. But I don’t think opening an independent wine shop in a West London during an economic slump is about “bravery”. It’s about risk. Risk is a part of any good business model. You research your market and calculate both the upsi ..read more