El Bulli was awarded its third Michelin star in 1997, and has ever since been fêted as the most original, most adventurous and most fabulous restaurant in the world, its owner Ferran Adrià (in us in the picture, further down) seen as the father of a style of cooking that has been imitated throughout the […]

Champagne is a delightful enigma; seen by some as a stand-alone category which bears scant resemblance to the rest of the wine trade, and by others as a bell-weather, providing early warning when choppy seas lie ahead but when the waters are calm, luxuriating in the hazy trappings of  indulgence and success. Whichever interpretation is […]

For Channel Four to devote a whole hour to the Wine Trade, at peak time, is a rare enough event – good news one might think. But wait, do I not recognise the Dispatches correspondent? Is it not The Sun’s fragrant trouble-maker at large, Jane Moore? A putative ignorance of wine is of course essential, […]

  I have just returned from a brief visit to a rain-drenched Rioja, tasting and assessing the new releases. The wines in general are elegant, fresh and focused but even in youth seem to  lack  something of the concentration and tannic grip of more illustrious forebears such as 2001 and 2004. Overall, I would say, of the major Bodegas visited La […]