Wine sales, consultancy and education
Readers of this blog will remember I recently waxed lyrical about the virtues of English wine in particular with regard to sparkling. Before you head to the shops eager to hunt out a bottle of English wine (which if I’m being wholly accurate should be English or Welsh wine) I wanted to flag something… British wine has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with English or Welsh wine and is a totally different ‘beast’ entirely (and in this instance that definition…
In the first part of this blog, I looked primarily at the ‘old world’ sparkling production of France, Spain and Italy, touching on the main production styles: • Traditional method (ie second fermentation in the bottle it is sold in) – ie Champagne, Cava, Franciacorta, Cremant • Tank method (aka Martinotti or Charmat), where the second fermentation occurs in a pressurized vat prior to bottling ie Prosecco, Lambrusco • as well as touching on the Asti method which is…
Everyone loves a glass of bubbles right? Actually, I’ve never been a huge fan, but having recently judged some Prestige Cuvée Champagnes (the best wines in a producer’s portfolio) I must admit some totally blew me away with their quality. There is a huge amount of sparkling wine out there to choose from and as it’s less than 12 weeks to Christmas (sorry but it’s true!!) it won’t be long before you start seeing all the pre-Xmas Sparkling wine…
Following on from a recent post on Chardonnay I thought it might be useful to do a quick overview of the classification system of Burgundy. As I touched on previously, the French do have a rather unhelpful way of labelling by appellation as opposed to grape variety which can make things rather confusing if you are not familiar with them. As a rule of thumb a red Burgundy is Pinot Noir and a white Burgundy is Chardonnay with Gamay…
In a bit of a departure from my usual blogs, today I want to talk about a recent trip to Hungary and a fantastic little wine bar visited in Budapest called The Tasting Table Hungarian wine is undergoing something of a resurgence in the UK following LIDL’s decision to stock a range of Hungarian wines yet many people still when asked what they know of Hungarian wine will often hesitate before tentatively saying “Tokaji”? The truth is there is…