It’s been the most hectic, frantic and let’s face facts, bonkers three weeks of my 22 years in the wine business. Seventeen hours-a-day of what seemed like stratospheric prices that we shouldn’t buy at one minute, that then sell out in an hour…….I’ve never seen anything like it.   So is this insanity that’s all […]

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 […]

There was a time not so long ago when the sight of large oak botti in a (Piemontese) cantina was synonymous with the past, with dirty, unripe and tough wines. The spangly ‘80s and ‘90s were the decades of the French barrique (2.5 hectare litres); one whiff of which calmed all fears, reassuring the market […]

I returned to Valpolicella in trepidation as to what I might find, and eat. The promising news is that there appears to be a wave of younger Venetians willing to forsake easy sales of fruit to the local Cantine Sociale (originally set to gather votes as well as fruit!) and give (fine) winemaking a go; […]