Single-Quinta Port

Nov 12 ,2019
Terroir and Character in the Douro ValleyPort, one of the mainstays of any drinks cupboard. It always makes an appearance at Christmas and, depending on whose house you’re in, may well have been there since the dawn of time. It is fairly easy stuff to come across and the main ...
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Second Best?

Oct 14 ,2019
Second label wines are second best. You can argue the point all you like but their purpose in life is to take second place after the grand vin. Nearly all of the big chateaux in Bordeaux have a second wine, a wine supposedly made from the grapes not deemed ...
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Riesling With Your Curry?

Oct 08 ,2019
What to do with an Auslese Riesling? Is its only purpose as a dessert wine? What's all this talk of sweet wine with curry?There are always trends in wine and food and luckily for Auslese Rieslings the trend is working in their favour. Cuisine from across Asia that encompasses ...
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Surplus to Requirements

Sep 02 ,2019
There is often a moment when my partner and I are out for dinner that we know may cause confusion or offence. This is the moment when the waiter brings over the glasses to go with the bottle of wine we have chosen, glasses so big as ...
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A Rose by Any Other Name

Aug 20 ,2019
It’s easy to be rude about Chardonnay. It's the grape variety people love to hate – the bad reputation it gained many moons ago thanks to cheap, over-oaked, synthetic tasting offerings make it an easy target.  But so many of those that say a blanket no ...
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Summer Vibes

Jul 23 ,2019
I think we can all safely say that summer has arrived and, although we dislike being told that we should be breaking out the barbecue and bathing in rosé, we will freely admit that a fair number of our wines are not really tempting ...
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Sweet

Jul 16 ,2019
Growing up in a large wine drinking family I always presumed my approach to wine was perfectly normal. I realised its abnormality when I reached university and my peers were confused by my love of dessert wine (or pud wine as we’ve always referred to it).Whenever we had ...
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A Question of Climate

Jul 02 ,2019
The more time you spend looking at wines from around the world the more you realise there is a pattern to the whole thing. Aside from the odd anomaly you start to recognise why certain ...
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Vieilles Vignes

Jun 12 ,2019
Given the recent revelation that grape varieties grown today are so closely related to those grown by the Romans 2,000 years ago, we thought that this week might be a good week to talk about old vines.Vieilles Vignes (old vines) is a term used in France to denote a wine that is ...
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Old and tired or perfectly mature?

May 13 ,2019
Not an easy question to answer when it comes to wine but certainly one that should be given more consideration by the average wine drinker. I recently saw someone boasting their good fortune at opening a bottle of 2015 Chateau Margaux. That’s like eating Wagyu beef before the cows ...
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