Coonawarra's potential as a great wine region was first recognised during the Gold Rush by Scotsman John Riddoch, but it was Samuel Wynn's investment in 1951 that started the ball rolling towards the international recognition that Coonawarra enjoys today.
Read more...While demand has been stronger than some traders expected in the UK, Europe and the Far East, it has been feeble in the US: the weakness of the dollar, the high prices paid for the 2003s, and the less-than-enthusiastic reports of influential reviewers such as Robert Parker and Wine Spectator have shrunk the market there. Some US shippers have even been declining their allocations of first growths.
Read more...Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting
Date: Tuesday 20 September 2005
Venue: Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground, London NW8
Time: 10am-5.30pm
The Wines of Argentina Annual Trade Tasting will take place on Tuesday 20 September at the Nursery Pavilion, Lord's Cricket Ground. Approximately 70 producers have registered to participate, and a separate, themed tasting will look at Malbec and More', for which exhibitors have been asked to submit wines that retail at 5.99 and above. For further information, please contact Tina Coady: call or fax 01480 384 806, or e-mail t.coady@ntlworld.com
On a balmy evening last March, at the tail end of the Chilean summer, a group of local vineyard workers from the Colchagua Valley gathered on the terrace of Franois and Jacques Lurton's house in Lolol to enact a song-and-dance dramatisation of the local grape harvest. Soulful and entertaining, this involved a slightly gawky but winsome teenager in a fetching cowboy hat plucking' the grapes from a busty matriarch, doing double duty as a vine', as she sang about the trials and tribulations of the harvest, as well as the challenges facing the itinerant grape pickers.
Read more...Multiple specialist Thresher has announced details of its plans to revitalise' Wine Rack.
Read more...Douglas Green Bellingham (DGB) has confirmed the acquisition of the Boschendal Wine business, with the deal going last week (see Harpers, 22 July), and pledged to increase its sales of premium wines in the UK by turning the company into South Africa's answer to Penfolds.
Read more...So what to make of the whole Allied Domecq-Pernod-Fortune Brands mnage trois? Reminds me of playing Monopoly when I was 10. No strategy at all - just furiously buying all the property in sight until the money was gone or you had driven all the other players into bankruptcy.
Tim Johnston was educated
at a very second-rate public school, from which I escaped aged 17'. He worked for Findlaters for a few months, before eight months in slavery' at Chteau Cantenac-Brown.
He apprenticed with Hedges & Butler, and in 1969 he moved to France, where he has been involved with several wine bars, including Willi's and Juveniles with Mark Williamson, The Blue Fox with Steven Spurrier, and Tournon in Bordeaux with Alex Herbage. He has written for Wine International, Wine Spectator and Saveur. He has vinified in France (Bordeaux, Hermitage and Provence), America (Chateau Montelena, Jordan Winery and Bill Wheeler's winery on Dry Creek Road) and Australia (Cullen). Juveniles sells wine for off- as well as on-premise consumption, and Johnston is available to source French wines.
Wines of Chile
Annual Trade Tasting
Lord's Cricket Ground
London NW8
Tuesday 13 September
10.30am-5pm
Liberty Wines has taken over the distribution of famed Clare Valley producer Jeffrey Grosset.
Read more...Do you know how glass is made? Sorry? Yes, it's got sand in it. Anything else? No? A straw poll among the Harpers team certainly showed up our manufacturing ignorance, but many people seem to take for granted the vessel that protects and contains the precious liquid that we spend most of our time writing about. If you'd like a full breakdown of what goes into glass, rather than what goes inside it, then see below. In a nutshell, it's a mixture of sand, limestone and soda ash.
Read more...A new Beaune-based ngociant, La Nouvelle Alliance/The New Alliance (LNA), has been founded by partners on opposite sides of The Channel with the aim of bridging the gap between small Burgundy growers and traditional ngociants'.
Read more...How did you end up running a hotel in the middle of Devon?
Read more...Leading South African winemakers Gary Jordan (Jordan Winery) and Niels Verburg (Luddite) will be visiting London in September to present the wines on offer at this year's Nedbank Cape Winemakers Guild Auction.
Read more...You started your business 26 years ago today. How did it come about, and why Ottery St Mary?
Read more...The recent launch in Ireland of a new Spanish wine followed the usual routine. The owner of the estate was visiting, and a clutch of press scribblers and favoured trade customers were invited to a lunch hosted by the importer. There was an opportunity to taste the whole range, and before we sat down the importer said a few words of welcome and introduction.
Read more...Chic Knightsbridge restaurant Zuma has added two bottles of the rare 1961 vintage Cheval Blanc to its wine list, following demand from customers who have seen it featured in the film Sideways, in which two friends take a road trip through California wine country.
Read more...Jacques Roux, marketing and sales director of Graham Beck Wines in South Africa, is to leave the company after 15 years.
Read more...The slender, ribbon-like stretch of vineyards that falls between the jagged Vosges mountains and the Franco-German border is a tangle of contradictions.
Read more...2005 is already a landmark year for the International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC). In March, the company opened its new, customised premises in Dunsfold Park, Surrey, with a 25,000-bottle capacity and room for expansion.
