Wine sales, consultancy and education
Apologies for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been busy attending various tasting events with a view to subjects for possible future blogs! For this latest piece I have decided to try and provide a useful guide to terminology you may come across on the wine label, what it means and more importantly what the implications are on the wine, as (usually!) there will be some. “Barrel Fermented” As the name suggests this describes a…
Before I review this wine I wanted to give a quick overview of the rather unique production processes used which many readers may not be overly familiar with. This orange wine from Georgia is made using traditional Georgian techniques which involve the use of a Qvevris - an oval shaped amphorae (often buried) into which the grapes are loaded and left to ferment. The grape in this instance is the indigenous Rkatsiteli which is a white grape. Yes that’s…
A good year for Bordeaux despite not being from one of the most reputed of the Grand Cru Classé estates this was still highly enjoyable despite the rather bonkers 15% abv! On the nose black fruits dominated (cherry, plum and blackcurrant) with sweet vanilla spice and obvious smokiness from 18 months in oak. This was a relatively full bodied red with noticeable dusty tannins, warming alcohol and notes of mocha and liquorice supporting the fruit on the palate through its…
I really do want to encourage more people to consume German wines and in particular German Riesling as they truly are well worth the effort but I understand how confusing and non-user friendly many labels can be. As I referenced in my last post on Riesling, the German classification system is a tricky beast and one that I don’t want to go into too much detail on as I suspect it will confuse more than assist. So there is…