Another pre-dawn awakening as we shuttled up a fog-bound Autoroute de Soleil to make our first appointment in Côte Rôtie at 10.00am. We found gregarious patron Joel Champet talking up the merits of the 2010 vintage as well as the prospects of ‘Les Bleues’ in this weekend’s Rugby World Cup Final: "they have nothing to […]

After a hugely informative, if fairly exhausting, visit to the Salon des Vins de Loire we headed south to Bordeaux for a spot of castle-creeping with the Baron and Baroness d’Anglade at Chateau d’Abzac. As any fule kno, it is relatively easy to source good, classed growth Bordeaux but you get what you pay for. […]

There is a common misconception that all Syrah grown in the New World is known as Shiraz but in reality this is far from true. New Zealand wine-makers universally refer to this noble grape as 'Syrah', a policy for which one individual can claim the credit. Alan Limmer of Stonecroft vineyard in Hawke's Bay was […]