It was a cloudy and rainy Thursday morning at Chateau Mouton Rothschild when wine writer and Decanter.com editor Adam Lechmere joined me to visit Chateau Mouton Rothschild to taste the 2012 wine from barrel. As usual during en primeur tastings at this renowned estate, we were led to and boarded a small golf cart that […]

Here we are, almost one quarter century later, and I opened a lovely bottle of Château Chasse Spleen, a well-known Medoc from the Moulis appellation. The vintage is 1990, a hot vintage that has aged well over the years. When those wines were released en primeur, as futures, prices were not nearly as mad as […]

I love telling the story about a bunch of French wine tasting experts – including top sommeliers and editors at Le Revue du Vin de France and Le Figaro – who in a blind taste test in Paris in 1976, under the direction of Steven Spurrier, who at the time was a wine shop owner, […]

Château Palmer did a very fine job with the 2011 vintage, and the second wine, Alter Ego, was also quite good. In this video, director Thomas Duroux, explains the challenges of the harvest and the vintage.

A tasting that brought home to me a certain nostalgia. A poster on the wine forum wineberserkers.com recently lamented the loss of Old School Bordeaux. He went so far as to give “faint praise” to the 1982 vintage, while extolling the virtues of the 70s and 60s. I found his comments a bit strange but […]

Once again, I am lucky to know so many cool and passionate wine-loving people in Washington DC. On December 29, we each brought some mighty special bottles, with no defects, no cork issues, quite lucky indeed. Participant Kevin Shin posted some superb notes on this dinner, and I agree with much of what he has written. […]

Here we are! Nearly 2012. For wine lovers, the end of a year seems to increase the need to taste superb wines.  At least, I feel that rush. And thank my lucky stars for having fellow wine lovers to share such experiences. As much as I am increasingly enamoured by the freshness of Burgundy as some modern […]

Just came back from London, where I spent two days (19-20 October) tasting nearly 80 cru bourgeois from the celebrated 2009 vintage. It was a blind tasting for Decanter magazine, in the company of some far more experienced palates, including Stephen Spurrier, Stephen Brook, Hugo Rose MW, and others. It was my third time in […]

Plus: Enjoying Bordeaux without losing your savings And detailed tasting notes on Pessac-Léognan and Graves 2008, 2009 and 2010 A return to Bordeaux late September, and as the harvest was coming to an end, I discovered a rollercoaster season, as written in my report for decanter.com. Botrytis-affected grapes left behind on the vineyard like so […]

Many thanks to Marie-Stéphane Malbec of Lettres de Château for a press invitation to the Graves region in Bordeaux late last month. I tasted some well known wines in the northern part, known as Pessac Léognan (but also some unsung heros there), and some truly fine (and less expensive) wines from the southern part. I […]