WELCOME TO WINE TERROIRS & TALES

2001 Chateau Rayas There have been many obituaries, eulogies and just RIPs to Emmanuel Reynaud since his much too young passing in November 2025. So it seemed the right moment to broach one of those iconic bottles that I am now too scared to uncork. Impossibly unaffordable to replace, dangerous to open in case a disappointment leaves you thinking just how much you could have sold it for. The conundrum that is the modern world of cult wines. I have drunk two bottles of Chateau

When I started to get into wine seriously, the most available, affordable and understandable ‘grand vin’ was Bordeaux, and if the top cru classes were beyond the reach of an impoverished ex-student, the usual advice was to buy the second wines. You’d get a real flavour of the great wine at a fraction of the price. I remember with my flat mate organising a tasting of second wines of Lafite, Latour etc for a friend who wrote for the Tatler. We were in our late twenties. Ironica

Jujuy - illustration from my new book by Arabella ‘Porque el vino, cuando es verdadero, no envejece: solo se transforma en memoria’ (Because wine, when it is true, does not age, it only becomes a memory) Alejandro Vigil, winemaker El Enemigo & Catena, Mendoza, Argentina Argentina is a land of extremes. Take the fabled Ruta 40, the road that forms the backbone of the country, from the cactus strewn Alto Plano high mountain Atacama desert on the Bolivian border, via the salt pl

A Brief History of Castello di Brolio It was in the twelfth century that the Ricasoli family took over the castle in Gaiole in Chianti. This castle has weathered centuries of attacks—from the Spanish to the internal battles between the Sienese and the Florentines. Brolio, being geographically closer to the former but politically allied to the latter, has seen it all. The current structure, a rather massive pinkish stone castle adorned with crenelated battlements and various t