The colour of Red and Rosé wine comes from the skin of the grapes. When you crush a white grape, keep the grape juice, discard the skins and allow the alcoholic fermentation to take place, you end up with a white wine.
 
If you crush red grapes and discard the skins, the juice is also clear [...]

Did you know there are eight red grape varieties that are permitted for inclusion in a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape? Did you also know that Chateauneuf du Pape literally means “Pope’s new castle”? In 1308, Pope Clement V, former Archbishop of Bordeaux, relocated the papacy to the city of Avignon. Clement V and subsequent [...]

My very first ever job was as Buyer of Italian Wines for Victoria Wine/Grants of St. James’s back in the 80s and I have retained many good friends from those years. Italy will always retain a very special place in my oenophile heart but there is such a confusing array of regions, names and most bewilderingly [...]

I’m not saying there aren’t any good English still wines, it’s just that I’ve yet to taste one that presses my button! However, if we’re talking Fizz, then it’s a whole different story. And ifyou think about it, it’s quite logical.
Sparkling wines require a higher level of acidity (Don’t ask me why, I’m not a Chemist) [...]

A dutiful Wine Importer must taste a bottle of every new shipment to make sure what’s arrived is what was ordered! So when our new shipment of Italian wines arrived I had about 8 or 9 bottles to open and check. You can’t drink them all at once and I hate waste, so drum roll [...]

Peter Richards is a wine journalist currently studying for his Master of Wine examination and successful candidates must produce a worthy thesis.
Peter’s is taking the subject of Premium Chilean Syrahs and as part of his research he invited a number of Wine Trade Luminaries (self included) to blind taste 25 such wines and to give [...]

I went to Vinisud with, amongst other things, the aim of getting to the bottom of sulphur allergy in wine. Several friends, customers, family members have complained of this, so I went to find out.
My destination was Christophe Bousquet at Ch. Pech Redon because his ’Les Cades’ Cuvee which we ship is produced from organically grown grapes [...]

Why the delay in posting Day 2? Well, when you spend the day at Vinisud in the sick bay with delirium and then lose your digital camera’s cable as I did, then it takes a while to catch up again. Anyway a photo of the sick bay is probably not that interesting.
So I lost a [...]

After a busy day tasting what do you do in the evening? Taste more wine! This time it’s back at Diane’s Chateau d’Or et de Gueules where we are staying. She has all of her French regional distributors coming round to taste the latest vintages and to share the biggest Paella I’ve ever seen. The [...]

The white wine tasting was as I should have expected; mainly ordinary wines, some good, few exceptional. But I have shortlisted a couple to see tomorrow;
Domaine Ste Rose is a name I have had in the back of my mind for some time, so when fellow Gerrards Cross resident, Mark Bingham, said he had once played [...]