Bit of a hoo-haa brewing about South African red wines, with Jancis Robinson and Tim Atkin both saying they lag behind the whites, and unsurprisingly many – from the Cape, but also from elsewhere – disagreeing. Yes, there are some great SA reds but there are also some extremely clumsy […]
Monthly Archives: July 2007
That’s what a friend of mine calls them. Another describes them as the sort of wines you could walk a mouse over. That’s right, I’m talking about bodybuilder wines, those made by people whose philosophy is that if ripe is good, then riper is better; if alcoholic is good, then […]
Big Dick Wines
Think the wine business is glamorous? Ask the poor souls who spend several hours a day each autumn up to their knees in grape mush. Once upon a time, many parts of the world used foot power to squish their grapes, but now, treading is virtually unique to a few […]
Trouble afoot
Ist possible?!? French wine trying to simplify matters? News that four Bordeaux appellations are going to join forces (see here) means that the region now has only 54 AOCs instead of 57. OK, it still means that it’s as confusing as anything to a normal person, but at least it’s […]
Bordeaux gets a little sensible
So the Bordeaux cru bourgeois classification is going to be suspended (see here). Golly, this WILL have the rest of the winemaking world quaking in its boots. Why, oh why do the French spend so much time on things that the rest of the world doesn’t give a stuff about? […]
Cru Bourgeois – who gives a stuff?
I have neither the time nor the liver to get through the amount of wine I taste. But that doesn’t mean that I open the bottle, slosh some round my mouth and immediately dispose of the rest to the sink/postman/dog/whatever. What I do do is annoy the pants off my […]