Over the past 30 years, I have watched the wave of Beaujolais Nouveau rise, crest and break in Japan. It used to be the cultural norm for Japanese adults to drink Nouveau from plastic cups on the third Thursday in November, just as it is to have champagne on New...

Welcome back to our wend around the alphabet of wine grapes! Last time around, we departed from the usual list of known varieties and detoured through a fantastic trio of indigenous whites: Aligoté (France), Bical (Portugal) and Coda di Volpe (Italy). If the next...

The next time you gaze at the wine wall in your local supermarket, imagine each bottle as a person with dreams and aspirations. In the Provençal wine region of Bandol, a lot of those people are women, who may work alongside the men at family wineries but in many cases...

Once the undisputed darlings of the fine wine scene, the ultra-expensive, ultra-polished Super-Tuscans face a new challenge as the wine world’s focus shifts to authenticity, says Walter Speller In the 1980s, the wine world was in thrall to the Super-Tuscans. These...

Tasting notes Bottles were blinded and randomized. Wines were opened 1-2 hrs prior to tasting. Most started to fade a bit after about four hours in carafe. All wines were in excellent condition and still very much in their prime. Bottle 1- 1973 Stags Leap (total group...

In France, as we emerge from the shadow of a pandemic unsure of how to interact with others, an old friend on the sunbaked Mediterranean coast anticipates our return. Nestled among the garrigue and olive groves are the vine-covered terraces of the Bandol hills, and...

A wave of new releases from some of Champagne’s most famous houses – and growers – is shifting attention away from the region’s fizz and on to its still wines. Essi Avellan MW explores the world of Coteaux Champenois Charles Heidsieck cellar master Cyril Brun is...

Ten years on, will the 2020 vintage, alongside 2019 and 2018, make it another golden treble for Bordeaux, emulating 2010, 2009 and 2008? The buzz from Bordeaux is upbeat, bar the decline in volume, but with the wines, as yet, unsampled there are still questions to be...

Among wine professionals it is now widely understood that you don’t actually taste wine, you smell it and as such, wine appreciation is very much a cross-modal experience. There are only five ‘tastes’ that can be detected on the tongue by the tastebuds and they are...