During a happy week in Japan I was able to acclimatise myself for the subsequent freezing conditions back in the UK. I missed the snow which fell in Tokyo while I was enjoying dinners in Hiroshima and Fukuoka, several stops down the bullet train line to the southwest, but the clear, crisp, weather conditions made […]

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, […]

The harvest in the Côte d’Or is now pretty much over and the growers are happier than expected. Though the weather forecasts indicated that there would be rain at any moment during the fortnight of the harvest, in fact it stayed dry until some storms passed through on Sunday 11th, by which time virtually everything […]