Top 5 Wine Posts for 2010

Jump for stars!! Find the Princess! Dodge the King! Like a Super Mario, Wine Woman & Song grew twice in size this year to take on extra hits and new worlds. Here were the highest-scoring Fire Flowers from 2010 (this year's most-read posts):

Changes in Rosso di Montalcino DOC race ahead

The red colour of Italian cars is not just any red. It comes from a long history of rules, mostly developed between the World Wars, from when car racing began. Different countries were assigned different colours: blue for French cars, white for German cars and, of course, British cars were racing green. Red was assigned for Italian race cars and now, the red colour of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Ferrari is instantly recognisable as a "race red" (or Rosso Corsa).

All these rules have a history, which gain sense from the time, but most people today know what is meant by Ferrari Red. Just as with Italian car colours, and a lot of things in Italy, Italian wines have many rules. So it is worth considering what the proposed changes in the rules mean, especially when on the 15^th December, the 15 board members proposed to change Rosso di Montalcino from 100% to 85% guaranteed Sangiovese.

The One that Got Away

This wine had the place smelling like Christmas for a week.

Can I give you a tasting note from broken bottle? At around £120 - £140 per bottle, I have to at least try... I was down on my hands and knees licking the floor. Risking shards of glass in my tongue just to have a taste.

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG vs European Union

Some headache! The morning after the party to celebrate 30 years of DOCG status in the ancient Tuscan town of Montepulciano, winemakers were making their way to Brussels to confront the European Union’s decision to change Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG to simple “Montepulciano”.

Lunch with the Marchesi de Frescobaldi at new Harrods Wine Department

Being a family with a well-recorded ancient past must not always be pleasant, but at least, like old photos or tear-stained letters, the evidence does not require many words. True, such things as archives, documentaries, and fashion can cause trouble over the years. And it definitely has for the Frescobaldi family at one time or another in its 700 year history.

Three Wines for Xmas Freeze Relief

I always know it is coming but I never really believe it when does. Winter. Each day seems to deepen my shock. I thought I'd share with you these three wines I easily found, EXCELLENT for freeze relief.

Delicious Chance: Essencia at Chez Bruce

By delicious chance, just three weeks before the year finishes, I finally tasted the number one wine on my 2010 Wish List: Tokaji Essencia (1993).

Well.

Last of the True Romantics: Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio DOC

Often my friend from Rome, perhaps while we are walking down the street to the supermarket on a grey Saturday morning, will abruptly stop, hold his hand over his heart, grab my elbow to jolt me back and say with eyes wide open in shock, "Did you see THAT? That's IT! I AM IN LOVE!"

Laughter in the Dark: Salice Salentino Riserva 2005 (and some tips on enjoying Italian wine)

Last night I tasted the Salice Salentino 2005 Riserva by the Candido family in Puglia. Salice Salentino is the name of a style of wine made from the Italian grape, Negroamaro, found on the Salentino plain located in Puglia, the heel of the "boot" of Italy.

As Nabokov puts it, "This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling..."

Brave New World: Italian varieties and the future of Australian wine pt2

The image of Australian wine at the moment overseas is supermarket-driven, Chardonnay-championing, industry-driven pah! You’d be forgiven to think Australia is only a vast industrial complex run by blokes in white coats performing Ludovico treatments on unsuspecting international wine writers who are held clockwork-oranged, wires holding their eyes and mouths open to drink high-alcohol wine full of splinters.

Lifting the fog: Pannell, Nebbiolo and the future of Australian wine Pt1

For a brief moment, I did an internship as a curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Like most internships it was unpaid, part of the reason why I started working in wine sales. Apart from that, one of the best things I learned from my time working as an intern curator in an art gallery was learning to ask questions beyond whether I liked or I didn't like a piece of artwork.

Grey Free State: Mornington Peninsula Pinot Gris

"....(it was) a spectral grey, as if all the colour has been sucked out by the sun." - Bruce Chatwin in "Anatomy of Restlessness"

There is a concept in philosophy called the grey area which is a concept for which one is unsure which category in which to place it.

Primal Genius: Protero Adelaide Hils Merlot and S.C.Pannell

This is a story that starts 2.6 billion years ago. When oxygen first gathered in the atmosphere and single-cell mitochondria ruled the planet, the landscape of Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills was formed. When the volcanoes stopped spewing poisonous gases and the single-cell animals and algae could start to get on with the process of reproduction. Glaciers melted. Fish got legs. Dinosaurs died out. A mere 60 million years ago the Kimmedgian soils of Chablis formed. Humans started fires. It's been a long way, baby. Until 2000, when the Baldarasso family called in two of Australia's finest winemakers Paul Drogemuller and S.C.Pannell to see what they could do.

A new room in the house: 2007 Coriole Vita Reserve Sangiovese, Mc Laren Vale

Just as the smell of clean sheets on the bed can signal a new start after an old affair, the fruit of the 2007 Coriole Vita Reserve Sangiovese is very pure and fresh like a soft, plumped pillow. Although perhaps it'd be more fun if it smelled a little less clean and a little more dirtier.

Bang for the Buck?

In the past week, there's been a regime shift in Wine Australia, the representative body to the UK, with a second major resignation. Paul Schaasfma has jumped into the void, arguing, "it's not rocket science, after all" and that Australian wine should be about innovation and personality which - he believes - is reflected in the sub-£6 per bottle mark in UK supermarkets.

Contrast with Berry Brothers & Rudd

October Wine Likes in Three Words

Greek Assyrtiko: between thyme and the deep blue sea

What is Assyrtiko? Grown on the volcanic soil of the Greek island of Santorini, it is a white wine that when good, is a summer wind by the sea made into taste and smell.

Last night I had the 2009 Hatzidakis Assyrtiko from Waitrose

2009 Beaucastel: Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark

2009 Chateau Beaucastel En Primeur Tasting

Tasting Chateau Beaucastel en primeur is like pressing pause on a moment in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, currently hurtling through space on the 1977 Voyager Space Probe Golden Record as a record of mighty human achievement.

Sicilian, Sartorial, Sensual: Planeta Dinner, W1

Sitting at dinner with Francesca Planeta, it did not surprise me when she told me her wine had run out at Milan Fashion Week.

The Mysterious Lady: Hunter Valley Semillon

Hunter Valley Semillon is the reclusive star in Australian wine. While other Australian wines have been all-singing, all-dancing on the world stage, Hunter Valley Semillon has been elegantly waiting in the wings or outside the theatre smoking a cigarette with an attitude of whatever, so what? I don't like fashion and I’m not signing autographs.

Librarians love 01 Les Pagodes de Cos

The 01 Pagodes de Cos, the second wine of Cos d'Estournel, is reckless, obstinate and from all accounts of previous vintages, annoying. The initial brett farmyard characters will either delight or disgust you depending on whether worn leather smells like the promise of sitting in a new car or crusty old boots. But to me, it's not that simple.

Anarchy in the UK? K Vintners' Viognier, Washington State

When Bill Grundy famously interviewed the Sex Pistols for ITV in 1976 he asked Siouxsie Sioux, was she worried or was she enjoying herself... "Enjoying myself," she replies.

Piedmont Songs in Australia: La Violetta

It is rare for a Syrah to call Piedmonte its spiritual home, let alone a Syrah from Australia.

Champagne, darkly: Blanc de Noirs

(Or, How to Have a Good Divorce Party. Advice to a Friend.)

"Dry your eyes, my friend. It's over. The white wedding may have been nice, the dress nice, all that money you spent on champagne on the day, sure, nice.

Cabernet by Stealth: Chinon, by Alliet

The 2006 Chinon Vieilles Vignes from Phillipe Alliet may start out as a typical 100% Cabernet Franc from Chinon: pale ruby, fresh and light dominated by raspberry characters, but this Cabernet Franc can not be simply described as Cabernet Sauvignon without the heavy cape.

The Self-Assembler: Hofstätter Pinot Bianco, Alto Adige

Alongside a glass of champagne or a cab ride in the rain, a good bottle of wine is one of life's affordable luxuries. Yet low-key, easy luxury is the most difficult thing to achieve; partly because it involves an element of effortlessness.

Old Man Claret: Bordeaux at £10 - £15 per bottle

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." - Henry Miller

Why drink Bordeaux at £10-15? Many other wines stride in with hi-how-are-you blasts. At this price, there are many choices for a medium-bodied red wine from nearly every corner of the globe. That’s why some are asking, is Bordeaux even relevant anymore?

Fifth Dimension: Movement in Taste

It's a fact that when you are truly dehydrated, the impulse for thirst in the body shuts down. So you never really know if you are dehydrated even though you desperately need water. In a similar way, sometimes with wine, you don't know a good one, or the idea of what that may entail, until you have one.

dark sunglasses required: sexy Sicilian wine

There’s a stuffy image to the wine industry. It’s where middle-aged men with cigars who imagine themselves out every night patting strippers on the bum between glugs of Bordeaux as they discuss wine like stock prices.

Sicilian wines are not for them.

There’s also the people who go to the supermarket on the way home from work, get home and perfunctorily open a bottle to watch television for a few hours before going to sleep to do it all again the next day.

Sicilian wines are not for them, either.

Sicilian wines are

TROPPOOOO BUONNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

New Wave: Kooyong Estate Farrago Chardonnay

In the same way as the sculptor Constantin Brancusi sculpted this piece in 1910, the Farrago Chardonnay from Kooyong Estate is spectacularly modern. Kooyong Estate winemaker Sandro Mosele has been peacefuly innovating on the Morninton Peninsula near Melbourne under the radar and turning out classic modern masterpieces.

To say this wine is defined by its minerality is like saying the above sculpture of Brancusi's Sleeping Muse is only defined by its smoothness.

Amarone: This is not a love song

If logic applied, I would not love Amarone della Valpolicella. To say it’s a big style of red is an understatement; it’s dramatic, high in alcohol and generally quite expensive. It has been said, Amarone “is seductive, sexy, confounding… an aphrodisiac”. Naturally, in the face of slavish devotion, I tasted it many times with regulation thin lips and furrowed brow. However, despite my best attempts to be cynical, I could not help but love the slightly debauched characters of licorice, smoke and dark fruits. Before long, I was singing the same love song, too.

supersonic: Mac Forbes' 2006 Woori Yallock Pinot Noir

Terroir

A good friend from Australia told me a story. After the Hospice de Beaune Auction in Burgundy he had driven down to the Rhone Valley. While there, he managed to cajole the reluctant Rhone winemakers to take a quick drive with him to Piemonte as it was “only a few hours drive over the mountains”. At first, the idea shocked the Rhone winemakers. Italy?! For my Australian friend, it was nothing, not even the distance from one Australian capital city to the next. They did it; and to this day, the winemakers from Rhone, Piemonte and Australia laugh about it and are all still friends.

Controversial Freisa: why this is an important wine varietal

“They can be fussy, unreconstructed; most of them don’t want to go along to get along. They have an attitude, an edge.” – Randall Grahm, Preface to Wines of Italy, Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology

There comes an evolution in the taste buds when tasting wine and that can be summed up in one word: bitterness. Bitterness is an acquired taste. A five year old does not like bitterness. Did you ever mistake a cold bottle of Indian Tonic Water with Schweppes Lemonade on a hot summers day as a child?

Diary of a Riesling Lover

Riesling Redux: April 3 - July 5, 2010

Riesling is something to turn to when the world gets too busy and crazy.

Riesling, especially German Riesling, is not easy, outside of the common push and shove of the marketplace, a tonic to the mad prices of Bordeaux En Primeur this year, which has been the background machine-hum to the following notes.

What is a 'vino da meditazione'?

I love reading wine tasting notes in Italian. I always want to sing it back. For example, What is a vino da meditazione? It's an intriguing term often seen in Italian wine notes.

It looks like the word "meditation", but it's not quite.

5 Regions in Australia You Should Know (if you pretend to know anything about wine)

ARGH. All this talk about boring, high-alcohol, industrial Australian wines. Usually by people who believe Australia is one large hydro-dam of Chardonnay. Yes, really. When I worked in Mayfair in London, someone actually asked me whether Australia has vintages. Someone who buys a lot of wine, and frankly, should have known better.

Arthouse Loire 2009

Skillfully made but distinctly low budget, 2009 Loire is an excellent remedy to the high madness of 2009 Bordeaux primeurs. Forget Bordeaux. Everything under £10 in Loire in 2009 is good value. More than good, excellent value.

From wine to widget (or, my Bordeaux sulk in Rome)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

"What I don't understand," said my Roman friend as we walked through the ruins of the ancient city of Rome, "is how these high prices of Bordeaux wine (En Primeur) can be in the public good?"

Yesterday I was on holiday in Italy. Frankly, I needed a holiday. After waiting weeks for the big names of Bordeaux to release their wines, and just a torturous drip drip drip, I was officially in a Bordeaux sulk.

Lunch with Randall Grahm: Imagining Change

Imagine we live on a planet. Not our cozy, taken-for-granted earth, but a planet, a real one, with darkpoles and belching volcanoes and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat. An inhospitable place. It’s a different place. A different planet. It needs a new name. Eaarth."

Environmentalist, Bill McKibben

To be honest, it took me a while to sit down and write this post after lunch with Randall Grahm from Bonny Doon vineyards. Why?

the blue wines of Tuscany

At first everything seemed fine, more than fine: from left to right, older terracotta-coloured wines from Chianti to the latest bright purple wines from the Tuscan coast of Maremma. The new 2006 Coevo sat in the middle: a perfectly balanced blend of two distinct regions, Chianti and Maremma. But then out came the Michelin-star Chef, Massimo Bottura, to introduce the food.

English Wine Week: Curiouser & Curiouser

Curiouser and Curiouser, said Alice in Wonderland, and she could equally be saying the same about English Wine. As it's English Wine Week (29th May - 6th June), let's go down the rabbit hole and find the English Wine bottle labelled DRINK ME.

The Problem with Pinot Grigio UK

Pinot Grigio found in the UK could almost be the perfect drink: it's plainer than water, it's nearly the same colour and it's not much more in price than a good bottle of sparkling... water.

Bazaar not Bizarre: Modern Turkish Wine

A mark of intelligence is how to answer stupid questions in a smart way. And before I went to this year's London International Wine Fair, I had many stupid questions about Turkish wine.

Let's start with the basics. Isn't Turkey Islamic? Are Islamic cultures allowed to make and sell alcohol? Is it going to be rough traditional wine that will give me headache? Can you buy wine in restaurants there? Where is this wine drunk? How do you even pronounce the grape? Is it even a grape or a style of wine?

Summer drink: Los Rebujitos

A good way to break up a hot afternoon sipping Sherry in the sunshine is to do what local Sevillianos do and make a Rebujito.

White Grange and Nirvana

2007 Yattarna or 2008 Bin 08A Reserve Chardonnay?

Nirvana's Bleach came out in 1989 on a budget of only $600, a thrilling album-long demo tape for their huge next album, Nevermind. Bleach is sound unpolished to perfection. So why was it this album cover the first image to come to mind when tasting the 2007 Yattarna? There couldn't be anything more opposite. Yattarna is a wine polished to perfection. On a huge Penfold's budget. Bleach was the birth of grunge.

Rose 101 - Why drink Rosé?

Before I tell you about Bibendum's Rosé tasting last night, I have to admit: Rosé has a special place in my life. I won my first serious job after university by writing a sales letter on Rosé. Nobody wanted to touch it. The manager flicked it at me across his very large desk with a hopeless smirk, "see what you can do with this".

Michael Broadbent on music and wine tasting

"What perhaps is needed is something approaching musical notation, for in many ways the problems are similar.

Bordeaux En Primeur 2009 vs The Volcano

Ejafjallajokull may have told Europe to kiss it's ash during the week, but volcano or no volcano, the 2009 En Primeur show must go on.

Savennières: what's cool in wine right now

Sit up straight. Now pay attention. I’m not going to say this twice.Savennières commands. The Chenin Blanc from the region in the Loire, doesn’t care about being popular or relaxing in front of the television at the end of the day. Turn the television off, says this wine, this is going to be a serious conversation about ideas.

South African Chenin Blanc (Mullineux White): what's cool in wine right now

There's nothing really wrong with most Chenin Blanc from South Africa, it's usually a perfectly nice breezy linen shift of a wine to throw in your bag for the day at the beach. This couldn't be said about South African wine five to ten years ago, and for that reason alone, it has to be politely acknowledged that most South African wines have improved immensely. Well done.

Then you taste Mullineux White from Swartland, South Africa.