Over August, I was on holiday just outside Lucca, and although not a lot of wine was drunk, I enjoyed comparing 2 Sangiovese made in completely different styles. 2023 Sassoarollo – is made by Jacobo Biondi-Santi using the families unique BBS clone of Sangiovese – the building brick of the appellation of Brunello di Montalcino. I think the Biondi-Santi wines are superb, I would probably want them in my cellar if I had one, albeit a tad expensive and a bit unreliable – they are unique and arguably the single greatest wine of the appellation. Whatever Soldera is – it …
Two Half-Term Bottles
The quality of the 1985 vintage in Bordeaux has been argued over for some time. Everyone agrees it was good. But how good? For the very British palate of Michael Broadbent, it was pretty much perfect, five-star – ‘almost as entrancing as 1953’ but he notes as well ‘Not block-busters, Claret at it’s ingenuous best’. The lack of blockbusters might have been a problem for the American Robert Parker – who is notably less impressed with the vintage. To my taste, even the very best wines like Lafite and Lynch-Bages, lack a certain quality to be found in their very …
Smith-Hayne Orchards
If you are looking for terroir in the UK. It’s not in the vineyards, it’s in the orchards. That’s not to say that there’s not some great wines being made here, but in terms of history and national culture they simply can’t hold a candle to the heritage of apple growing we have here. A heritage that is woefully underappreciated by ‘connoisseurs’ who can talk about the lieux-dits of Burgundy or Jura but not the heritage of their own country. People like me that is. But I can change right? I was blown away by a recent visit to Will …
Fabrice Vigot – Fair pricing for Very Fine Vosne-Romanee? If it’s a dream, don’t wake me up.
About 100 metres apart, there are two very different versions of Vosne-Romanee laid out upon the RN74. The spotless winery of Charles Lachaux, projecting plenty of ‘quiet luxury’ and the homely one of the Vigot family, that you suspect, has barely changed in the last twenty years. Whilst for good or bad, everyone is aware of million pound / yen / euro bottles of Bourgogne Rouge made by the new Arnoux regime, less is known about the quiet and incremental progress of the wines by Domaine Fabrice Vigot. I have only visited the Arnoux winery once, whilst it was in …
Another Night at Brunswick House
Amongst all the mega developments, ill thought-out swimming pools in the sky and various crappy, soulless and dead-eyed architectural schemes stands Lassco house and the increasingly sophisticated cooking at Brunswick House. Always excellent, our meal last night seemed to be even more precise, flavourful and interesting then my past memories of meals gone by. Unfortunately, the glasses were a bit on the crap side, or to be more accurate, for the Burgs, did not really work that great. More on that later on. We did the wines sort of blind, and they were all great, difficult to choose a wine …
French Wine is not Dead
“Just one more thing” says Lieutenant Columbo. “Just one more barrel” says Jean-Pierre Robinot. And so it turns out to be more difficult to leave the cellars of JMR then it was to find him in the first place. Outside we wondered a few hours before, calling various numbers, knocking on various doors in his winemaking compound. But eventually, amongst the abandoned cars, industrial oddments and agricultural detritus, we were shown gleaming, golden, treasures of Chenin Blanc, fermenting at rates so slow they would have teachers at UC Davis or Montepellier Viticultural Schools scratching their heads. Rare wines, alive and …