Personally, I think Beaujolais is brilliant. Yet it presents us with a paradox. Having achieved phenomenal worldwide brand recognition in the 70s and 80s with their light, fruity ‘Nouveau’ style, many Beaujolais producers are now trying to disassociate themselves from this style and hence from the very source of their success. Why? Well, human nature […]

I have just emerged from under the cosh of preparing January’s Grand Burgundy Offer unveiling the 2010 vintage. This time of year is always very high pressure – firstly we need to taste the whole range of wines – around 500 of them – and prepare tasting notes; then there is the frantic whipping in […]

Our annual tasting trip to Burgundy is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year for me, and it is also one of the most challenging trips – we generally average just under 100 wines a day and these are cask samples, not the finished product.  As such they demand a great deal of attention, […]

A week spent tasting the 2010 vintage proved to be a joy, despite an inauspicious beginning on Monday morning under leaden skies with the lunar calendar telling us it was a Root Day, not deemed propitious for tasting. After the opulence of the easy-to-read 2009s the growing season in 2010 was more challenging, with less […]