WELCOME TO WINE TERROIRS & TALES

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

It was in the twelfth century that the Ricasoli family took over the castle in Gaiole in Chianti. It has weathered the centuries of attacks from outside (the Spanish) and inside as the Sienese battled with the Florentines (Brolio being geographically closer to the former but politically allied to the latter). The current edifice, a rather massive pinkish stone caste with crenelated battlements and various different towers, stands in lovely gardens surrounded by vines and oliv

A Year in the Vineyard at Domaine Clape Cornas By Magali Jacob & Quentin Preaud (linocut illustrations) English & French Editions, 2025   I’ve just paid for a clean up and upgrade of this little website, so I hope it’s all working and thoroughly visible. It’s a shame how much work and money you have to expend to get the likes of Google to list you on their searches… Anyway, it’s that time of year – the last golden outburst of autumnal Nature in all its Fauvist glory, the cyni

45 years apart When you are past middle age, shall we say politely, it’s not often you get to taste your birth year vintage once, let alone twice in a few weeks. Especially when it happens to be the legendary 1961. It started back in 2011 at a tasting of Bourgueil wines from Lame Delisle Boucard at Caves Bossetti in Paris. They were straight up from their tufa chalk cellars, cool and deep in the Loire Valley. And 100% Cabernet Franc. To be honest I know the wines of Chinon so

David talks vineyards and geology ‘Imagine Beaune as the Bahamas during the Jurassic, around 150 million years ago’.   It was a compelling image from geologist Francoise Vannier, up on the podium with David Croix to introduce a fascinating tasting of Beaune climats and terroir, that prehistoric inland sea (that reminds me of another famous one in Chablis where the Kimmeridgian soil is comprised of squashed ancient oyster shells, the same in Sancerre).   Around 23-35 million y

Street Mural in Haro, Rioja It really was a fluke coincidence. My wife and cousins had been walking part of the Camino and I’d been chasing truchas in the Pyrenees and we met in Logrono. On the 20 th  September, date of La Fiesta de San Mateo otherwise called the Rioja Wine Harvest Festival. Logrono La Fiesta Now the Spaniards, or Riojans, know how to party. It kicks off with rockets, brass band marches, foot stamping of grapes and general mayhem at midday and continues for a

‘The Wine in My Glass – Tales of Wines, Winemakers and Places’   I have to preface this with a warning that this post is publicity for a new wine book for which any/all profits go to charity, to Vendanges Solidaires, an association that helps young winery owners whose crop and livelihood has been ruined (50% loss or more) by the ever more frequent extremes of the weather. That said, I can admit that I wrote and financed it, so if you enjoy this blog, hopefully the book might

Lamy, Sauzet, Ramonet - a fine line up of 2014 premeir crus The week had started well, when our Norwegian friend Andre opened a 2012 Chave Hermitage that was not oxidised, (after a series of bottles and vintages that were). It’s a deep yellow wine of the south, built on sunshine not acidity and to be honest not really to my taste. Impressively structured and rich, but just a bit too much so. But it does sadly prove that it’s not just Burgundy which suffers from premature oxid

Entrance to Chablis A year ago, on my last visit in spring 2024, the Serein River was a muddy torrent in flood. But in late June 2025 it was a trickle over bleached stones. I’ve never seen it so low. Nor could I go for my usual walk around the grand crus, as climbing up the steep slope to the little forest above Les Clos, (it looks like a small tuft of hair on someone’s rather bald head) was just not going to happen as the car thermometer read 38c. Domaine William Fevre has 4

Looking over to Montalcino I have been many times to Chianti, between Florence and Siena, but only in more recent years to Montalcino and the gloriously scenic and much-photographed Crete Senese south of Siena and the equally if not more picturesque Val d’Orcia south of Montalcino. Perhaps because of this, but also the fact that corporate dinners sometimes involved less expensive, commercial and often large production Brunello, my bias was more towards the bricky, lighter ele

Clusel-Roch and Rostaing I keep forgetting how much I like Syrah from the Northern Rhone, and how much it is not a wine from the south even though the word Rhone tends to make me think in that direction.  After all, a series of recently drunk bottles of Cote Rotie and Cornas from 2006 to 2010 all weighed in at 12.5 to 13%, less than a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny or most Chablis and back to the good ole days of Bordeaux last century. Again, it’s easy to presume Syrah is a sout

The 2 Superstars of Chambolle - Mugnier and Roumier Ask any top winemaker and they will promise you that they take as much care over their basic wine as their grand cru. It is, after all, more affordable and there’s a lot more of it, so it is very much their calling card, and I suspect it’s more challenging to produce a great village blend year in year out than it is some lofty grand cru.  If you believe in the sanctity of terroir, well, you’d have to struggle to make a reall

The 3D map of Barolo If Burgundy is the temple of terroir, and now the altar to hype and the unaffordable, Barolo is fast becoming the alternative new cult for the poor folk who are not billionaires or retain some sense of value for money. For those obsessed with the terroir-driven Pinot Noir, the Nebbiolos of the Langhe offer a nostalgic flashback to some of what Burgundy used to be: a complicated patchwork quilt of vineyards, but here with multiple valleys and all points of

As good as it gets with Langhe Nebbiolo? Endless rain, a million damp slippery leaves underfoot, shortened days, holidays seemingly long gone, it’s that somewhat depressing time of year. Enjoy the last exuberant blast of technicolour Nature and hang in there until Christmas. But the season also brings its blessings – a new grape harvest, an abundance of mushrooms and, if lucky, truffles. In fact, I wish I was in the Langhe, trudging around the vineyards of Barolo, dreaming of

Dupont-Tisserandot's Gevreys Gevrey-Chambertin. It’s the first biggish and, of course, major wine village that you hit when heading south into the Cote de Nuits, and as you head down the Route des Grands Crus out of town towards Morey-Saint-Denis, the road bisects the famed grand crus, Charmes, Mazoyeres, Griotte and Chapelle on your left (east, downslope) side and Latricieres, Mazis, Ruchottes and the jewels of Chambertin and Clos de Beze up over your right shoulder. For any

Colourful Burgundy rooves in NSG I realise that I’ve been negligent in posting, though I do have a valid excuse (writing a book, to be published in 2025 which will hopefully perambulate joyfully around Piedmont, Tuscany, Sicily, Valtellina, Napa, Salta, Patagonia, and all that is French viticulture). So when we needed to find a stop off point en route to the south (and some blessed sunshine, such a rarity this year), Beaune seemed the obvious place. Always a good road sign to

Natural wine publicity The radio this week has been full of despairing parents complaining about unavoidably ubiquitous smart phones at primary schools and worried politicians debating how to regulate AI.  The generation gap between us Baby Boomers and the I-phone Babies could not be more obvious. But it’s not just technology and social media that demonstrates the yawning divide, it’s drinking habits too. Whilst the (grand?) parents rummage around in their cellars for preciou

High altitude vines Jujuy. It’s two hours flight northwest of the Argentina capital on the border with Bolivia, with a long backbone of the Andes and, on top, the Atacama desert with its salt plains and cactus parks. The backdrop is not just a matter of towering mountains and the majesty of the Andes – you find that equally in Patagonia, Mendoza and Salta, but here in Jujuy you add a painter’s palette of colours, a brilliance of light and a crazy array of all shades of the sp

Novello Every time we drive back from Italy, we snake up the motorway through the narrow Val d’Aosta to the Mont Blanc tunnel, and admire...

‘La France va mal’. Having lived here for 30 years it’s a perennial cry. France is sick! Looking across the Channel at the ongoing...