WELCOME TO WINE TERROIRS & TALES

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

It’s not often that we talk about art in the wine world unless it be the art of the winemaker, or the various domaines that hire an artist every year for their label, headed by Mouton-Rothschild. Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris is probably the high church of bottle art. But in Barolo? There are few more picturesque places than the valleys of Barolo on a blue skied, sunny autumn afternoon, with the slanting rays setting over the first Alpine snows and illuminating the jewel-like sca

Castelnuovo Beradegna. It sits perched on top of a hill, the last outpost of Chianti on the southern border looking towards Siena and the Colli Senesi. In the distance looms Monte Amiata towering over Montalcino. As you head past the huge black cockerel which reminds you that you are still, just, in Chianti Classico, you see a line of cypress trees standing like soldiers at attention, heading to a car park where you slide your vehicle in between olive trees. In front of you

Not just any Bourgogne Rouge You can forget the hyberbole, this is a literal use of words. This wine really is unique. It only happened once and will not be repeated. The name Lalou Bize-Leroy never creates indifference in Burgundy. Her tasting abilities are legendary, the prices she demands for her wines stratospheric, her biodynamic convictions messianic. She pushes up land prices and her vines look a mess as she leaves the ‘apex’ (top bud and the tops of the vines) untrimm

It’s pouring with rain, a howling gale, branches down everywhere, bins blown over and anyway if you go out you get arrested, fined or virused. Time to sit in front of the fire and dream of summers past and, hopefully, future. And where better than Tuscany, rolling hillsides of vineyards and sparkling olive groves, elegant avenues of cypress trees smartly at attention. A place of wild boars, porcini and beef, of Chianti and Brunello, of virgin oil and culture, and, gran Dio, w

It is, covid apart, the festive season, time to be merry, drink well and eat luxuriantly. In France it’s black truffle season and of course in Italy they go one better. In late autumn the first snows grace the Alps, MonViso looking like a white topped Fuji, the vineyards are a patchwork quilt of gold and scarlet as the Nebbiolo, barbera and dolcetto leaves turn into jewels, and dogs search under the holm oak and hazel trees for the priciest jewel of all, magnatum pico, the Al

The alarm seemed painfully loud, but by the time I had dragged myself out to the car, in the pitch dark wetness of a December morning, I was fully legal, by half an hour. The French government released lockdown and after six the curfew was off (for 14 hours anyway). The A6 is a nightmare when it is two lane, with endless trucks throwing out blinding spray in the still black morning, but I had to be in Meursault at 10,30 and this was the only way to do it. 300kms and three hou

Wines so often come with a story and a history. In 2016 we were staying in Ireland with my wife’s family and on the way back we stopped off at Balymaloe House, where our daughter was doing a morning’s cookery class and we were having the Sunday buffet dinner served by the Allen family (tv chefs, cookbook authors and renowned food purveyors). As we checked in, the young sommelier asked if we’d like to see the cellar. Why not? It was not very large, but I spotted a single bottl

A couple of friends, Richard and Tiffany, came to supper and gave us a bottle. It was filthy, covered in thick dust with a rather grimy old label. He had been advised to buy it in the Caves de Marly, a wine shop to the west of Pairs (Marly-le-Roi near St Germain) that specialises in interesting wines that are generally affordable, well chosen and often mature. Now that I am partly retired and often collect my daughter from school in St Germain, it is an evil temptation that

Chablis. I think it was in the early 1980s as an indigent student travelling back from friends in Provence that I first set foot in the town. We were in a beat up 2CV and it was a very slow, long drive and super hot on the A6 motorway. We needed sustenance, a rest and a drink. When still a couple of hours from Paris, I spotted the sign to Chablis. For some unremembered reason I had found a 500 franc note (about 50 quid, a fortune!) in my jacket pocket (from my parents?)

Having started this blog in Sancerre with the Dr No of Chavignol (Sean Connery having just passed on, and Cotat's door supposedly always being closed) I thought we'd better drink one... As I said, vintage does matter here, and though global warming in the Loire may have helped the wines (especially the reds?) and this end of the Kimmeridgian chalk belt does not suffer from frost whereas in Chablis every spring there are hay bales burning, candles lit, windmills whirring, wate

It was 2017 when Jean-Marc Rolout returned to the silver screen in 'Ce que nous lie', a charming movie of family retrievals set, of course, in Meursault where he is already a star. Around that time I was in Burgundy with wine mad Norwegian friend Andre and we had managed to access two coveted spots at four o'clock on a friday. In Meursault. For that is when the weekly tasting happened for a lucky group. Andre has parked his large Volvo and was a bit put out when some late

Kimmeridge. It's a village in Dorset in southern England, and very picture postcardy - thatched roofs and sandy beaches. But to any wine lover, it's real claim to fame is not the cliff walks or the oil deposits offshore, but the fossileforus marine clay from the late Jurassic, classified by a French geologist right here nearly three centuries ago. In poor layman's terms, fossilized oyster shell limestone. But just like the chalk of Hampshire and Wiltshire, it dives under