I was intrigued that the British real estate brokers quoted in your news item about the surge of interest in Tuscan wine estates (January 2021 issue) cite the Covid-driven realisation that people can ‘work from...the Tuscan countryside’ as the reason

Heat and drought were the defining characteristics of the 2019 vintage in the Rhône. The heat spikes were lower in the north than they were in the south, with temperatures rarely topping 40°C, but you still feel the sun in the wines. Neither was the

From new Brexit duty-free limits to US tariff tension, January 2021 has reminded us how access to wine can be affected by shifting international trade rules. An 11th-hour Brexit deal brought some good news for the UK’s 33 million wine drinkers, said

The fine wine market has entered 2021 on a sea of relative calm, according to several trade voices, despite wider economic uncertainty. Many Liv-ex indices showed modest gains in 2020, led by the Champagne 50 and Italy 100 – both up between 6%-7% ver

Wine writing is full of discussions about different grapevine varieties, often with mentions of the soils they are growing in. But usually ignored is the thing that links the two together – the vine rootstock. Rootstocks influence how grapes ripen. H

On a frosty, foggy winter’s morning, a worker attends to Shiraz vines in the T&L Vineyard at Clonakilla, a silhouette in the mist, skeletal vines towering above. Founded in 1971 , this winery is renowned for its flagship Shiraz-Viognier, which benefi

If you listen to the man responsible for its existence, the success of Spain’s most celebrated cult red wine is almost entirely down to forces beyond his control. Fate, good fortune, the right place at the right time... these are the motifs in Peter

Gin from Europe?’ you might be thinking. ‘Is nothing sacred?’ After all, gin is as proudly British as fish and chips, Tesco and Fray Bentos meat pies. This is correct – but only in so far as none of the above are strictly British inventions, either.

California white wine is almost synonymous with Chardonnay. It’s the state’s most widely planted grape variety of all, with nearly 37,800ha in 2017. And anyone who thinks it’s going out of fashion should think again. Chardonnay has been California’s

The ‘gran’ in gran reserva could be said to have made Rioja great. It built the image of venerable elegance, of the refined interplay of oak with an autumnal palate of mellow fruitfulness. Despite this, there is a remarkably small proportion of gran

Bodegas Lecea’s deep underground cellars in San Asensio are some of the most beautiful in Rioja, popular with wine-loving tourists in search of good reds, a friendly family welcome and a brush with the past. Some of the concrete tanks in these cool g