‘I first had the idea of producing wine back in Burkina Faso about four years ago,’ said François Desirè Bazie, an asylum seeker turned winemaker committed to seeing vineyards flourish in his home country in West Africa. Born in Burkina Faso, Bazie sought asylum in Piedmont during the 2000s due to escalating civil conflict in… Read More »
What happens when wines are left beneath the waves? By Stuart Walton Shipwreck wines discovered after a long sojourn beneath the sea have inspired a trend in underwater aging, says Stuart Walton. The recent discovery by a group of Polish divers of a sunken trading vessel in the Baltic, evidently freighted with dozens of intact… Read More »
Benjamin Lewin MW examines wine’s proliferating pecking orders. By Benjamin Lewin MW Consider two extreme systems for describing wine: One is to assume that origin is important and to assign every plot of land a position in a hierarchy. Burgundy is the paradigm, of course. An alternative is to give no description at all except… Read More »
German vineyards in several regions suffered frost damage in late April and insurance group Allianz Agrar has said it expects payouts on customer claims to be in the ‘double-digit million’ range. It’s still assessing damage, but it described the late spring frosts as the worst in at least 40 years. ‘I have experienced many late-frost… Read More »
Idda, the Gaja and Graci joint venture on Mt Etna, has started welcoming visitors. By Luciana Girotto On June 22, 15 of London’s finest sommeliers were lucky enough to be the first wine professionals to be invited by Giovanni Gaja for a tour of the vineyards and the brand-new, state-of-the-art winery at Idda, the joint… Read More »
Website: https://riverviewcrouchvalley.com/ It’s an interesting time for English still wines at the moment, and the Crouch Valley in Essex is emerging as a bit of a hotspot. This is a new wine, and it comes from the tricky 2021 vintage (recent vintages in the UK – 2018 abundant and good; 2019 tricky with a damp… Read More »
According to Antoine Lespès, research and development manager at Domaine Lafage just outside Perpignan, the average rainfall at this Roussillon estate between 2010 and 2023 was just 550mm per year. These last few years have been particularly dry: in 2021 and 2022 there was 340mm. In 2023, just 240mm – ‘like Marrakesh,’ says Lespès. Thankfully,… Read More »
California wine country may be on the doorstep, but this luxury property on the edge of Sonoma also comes with its own 1.6 hectares (four acres) of Chardonnay vines. Photo credit: Jack Hecker for Sotheby’s International Realty. That could be tempting for anyone wanting to get hands-on with this famous white grape variety, although the… Read More »
Chris Howard explores the resonances between wine and the works of the great American abstract expressionist painter. By Chris Howard “I am interested only in expressing basic human emotions”—Mark Rothko The enigmatic allure of Mark Rothko’s glowing color fields has captivated audiences ever since their appearance in the early 1950s. A pivotal figure in 20th-century… Read More »
White Zinfandel is a category that rarely makes it to these pages (although it does get a mention in this blog post from 2016 when I commented on how Sutter Home White Zin made the fortunes of the Trinchero family). Well here’s one of merit, from Michael Cruse, who’s used Zinfandel to make a rosé-style… Read More »