Website: https://hedgesfamilyestate.com/ Hedges Family Estate La Haute Cuvée 2019 Red Mountain, Washington State, USA13.5% alcohol. 93% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3.5% Petit Verdot, 3.5% Merlot; 93% Hedges Estate Vineyard, 7% Magdalena Vineyard. 27 months maturation in oak, 78% new, 76% French, 24% American. Biodynamic. Beautiful aromatics of spice-laden blackcurrant fruit with some tar and gravel notes. The… Read More »

The Mosel producer looks back on 20 years of wine growing. By David Williams In the first of a series of extended interviews with leading wine growers marking 20 years of The World of Fine Wine, Katharina Prüm of JJ Prüm in the Mosel tells David Williams about her experiences of wine growing over the… Read More »

Website: https://dobbinestate.com/ Dobbin is an exciting new winery on the Twenty Mile Bench in Canada’s Niagara region, and it’s based on a special terroir. Back in 2019, Peter Gamble received a call from Wade Dobbin, the owner of the property. Wade mentioned that he had a piece of land with a vineyard on it and… Read More »

Poor weather has hampered winemakers’ efforts to uproot vines this year as part of a ‘grubbing up’ scheme, said the Bordeaux wine bureau (CIVB). As of 10 July, more than 3,000 hectares (ha) of Bordeaux vines had been uprooted as part of a ‘sanitary grubbing-up plan’ co-funded by France’s Ministry of Agriculture and the CIVB,… Read More »

I’m fascinated by wild vines. We often see vines growing neatly in rows in vineyards, making it easy to forget that these are wild plants, typically growing as lianas. This term describes plants like the grape vine, which are structural parasites, using other plants for support. Plants compete for resources such as nutrients, water, and… Read More »

Website: www.domainefichet.fr Domaine Fichet is one of the most impressive of the Mâconnais domaines I’ve visited. They are based in Igé, a village of 900 people, many of whom make a living from wine. Run by brothers Pierre-Yves (vintage 1965, he looks after viticulture) and Olivier (winemaking), the current domaine was formed in 1988 and… Read More »

Margaret Rand on the couple behind one of Virginia’s most impressive wine estates. By Margaret Rand Margaret Rand meets Robert and MeiLi Hefner on their Ramiiisol estate, where they are pursuing a Jeffersonian dream of natural wine through determination, eclectic knowledge, and unconventional wisdom. We have to start somewhere, so why not with the Dallas… Read More »

Polish divers from the BalticTech Team discovered the shipwreck and its Champagne cargo while looking for new spots to explore in the Baltic Sea. Two divers went down to investigate after the group noticed what appeared to be a small wreck on their sonar system. It turned out to be a 19th century shipwreck still… Read More »

‘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 »