I can’t remember an English middle-class dinner party where no one raised the cheese-before-pud or pud before- cheese question. ‘You can’t surely…?’ ‘Oh, but in France…’ go the explanations; ‘…you finish your red with the cheese’. How tedious it gets.
How would Bordeaux fare if all we saw were big brands?
What price luxury?
Perhaps they should make it stronger. Or make sure it doesn’t have that give-away taste of fresh fruit. What are the Germans doing wrong to put us off their wine? We drink oceans of mediocre stuff from far-flung countries but turn our noses up at some of the world’s freshest and most characterful. Is it that Germany doesn’t conjure up visions of glorious meals? Or that not many of us go on holiday to its quaint wine towns? Is it the language?
Dear Decanter reader, I hope you don’t read all the stuff they’ve been saying about Australia in the trade press. That the wine industry has totally messed up. That they’ve planted hundreds of square kilometres of unnecessary vineyard. That they’ve run out of water. That they’ve prostituted their best brand names.
It’s a problem not many of us are troubled by, but the prices of the wines that set the ultimate standards (and which we all like to refer to and lust after) have become positively embarrassing. Embarrassing for a new reason. If you are one of the lucky ones with a few Lafites or Cheval Blancs in your cellar, who can you serve them to? Their amazing prices are becoming common knowledge. The first reaction of any of my friends or acquaintances (not the spoilt wine professionals among them) to my pulling a cork on hundreds of pounds is all too human: What is the agenda? What does he want from me?
Wine merchants have developed, along with a robust strain of hyperbole, a nicely nuanced vocabulary of mild disparagement for wines they hesitate to describe in superlatives. ‘Elegant’ means ‘on the lean side’. ‘Interesting’ can mean anything you like. ‘Lunch wine’ (or more pretentiously, ‘luncheon claret’) means a decent wine, even a classic one, but with a hint of dilution that would cost it, in the brutal world of scoring, a vital few points. Or does it even mean that much these days, now that lunch has joined smoking, drinking, Irish jokes and querying climate change as beyond the pale?
What if I were to tell you that they have decided to make Dijon Airport a cargo hub for eastern France, and that Ryanair is stationing its French holiday fleet there?
A plan to build a bridge straight through one of Europe’s most famous wine regions has enraged hugh johnson, who believes that it is both unwanted and unnecessary
I heard about the high Mosel bridge so many years ago, that I honestly forgot about it. I thought that it was a folly of the 1960s and ‘70s which had gone the way of follies in the history – that it would never come back. again.
Sauvignon and Semillon – Bordeaux’s white wedding
New Zealand should go the whole Burgundy hog
89, 90, even 100...what's the point?
It's all in the timing
A unique tasting was laid on at Christie's New York for 30 Latour lovers and collectors recently. HUGH JOHNSON joined them.
