Vindochine
Tim Belcourt looks the part of an outlaw biker, a long white handlebar moustache gives him the appearance of a grizzled walrus, tattoos cover his forearms, there are lasting scars, on the inside as well as out. A veteran Harley rider who would regularly do a solo run from Singapore to Cambodia, […]
I have just returned from Vinexpo in Hong Kong, where I was invited by my friend and colleague Robert Joseph, (of Le Grand Noir Wines) to attend an insightful presentation he called, ‘The Future of Wine Has Changed’. His seminar and wine tasting looked at emerging trends through all levels of the wine industry, […]
The Chardonnay Set The Chardonnay grape variety is arguably the most famous white grape variety of them all; as Master of Wine Jancis Robinson recalls, during the last decades of the first millennium -when New World producers began putting grape varieties on the front labels of their wines, it was Chardonnay that made the […]
Gewurztraminer, few can pronounce it (Gee-Worse-tram-inner) and even when they can, it generally fails to inspire much excitement. A rather motley looking grey, rose coloured grape in the vineyard its wines are perfumed, spicy and highly aromatic. A controversial wine amongst critics, the legendary Christie’s wine auctioneer and Master of Wine, Michael Broadbent […]
‘And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon the place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold […]
The winegrape variety known as Grenache has long been derided as common and somewhat ordinary: in Spain, (where it is called Garnacha) it was widely planted to make all manner of inexpensive wines: In France it was used merely to bulk up thin Burgundian wines in poor years and in Australia it was an unimportant […]
The Wines of the Cote Rotie, (Roasted Hillside) on the sharp rising slopes at the Northern end of the Rhone Valley are some of the most seductive and alluring wines from all France and indeed the world. Elegant, yet richly concentrated and with characteristic roasted nuts, pan juices and mixed spice, they have a […]
A recent trip to Phnom Penh by my old McLaren Vale Vineyard manager, Adam Jacobs -now the owner of his own vineyard and wine label, Doc Adams wines- brought back a flood of memories of the many harvests we lived through together and the many wonderful wines we made. After first meeting in the wine […]
Les Années Folles “But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong, nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition During the […]
For a great many centuries, ever since their origins on the silk road as a snack to go with Yum Cha, (literally drinking tea) the small morsels of delicious food known as Dim Sum have been as much about the art of attraction as they have about sustenance. Competing vendors would come up with ever […]