In an attempt to live up to Charles Walter Berry’s famous 1930s definition of a wine merchant: ‘The closest link between the people who make the wine and the people who drink the wine’, I recently headed to Frog’s Leap Winery in Rutherford, Napa Valley to help out for a week during the harvest. I’d […]

I get often asked: “What wine would you drink if your days were numbered?” It is a very difficult question to answer, not because I don’t have my preferences, favourites or have never experienced a wine moment where I said to myself:  “This wine is a proper one, whose transparency lets its sense of place […]

It’s been a week of contrasting approaches to wine appreciation and assessment. It kicked off with the first ever visit to Piedmont by Berrys’ Hong Kong sales team. Then there was the tasting of Barolos from the 2001 vintage, as organised by Decanter Magazine. And finally we all headed to Turin’s Stade Olympico to attend […]

Despite the French strikers’ best intentions to keep me out, I made it to Bordeaux eventually to visit some great châteaux and have the first taste of new juice with a handful of our international customers last week. Highlights of the week included watching the harvest come in, tasting the juice and hearing what the […]