The other night I opened a red from Moulis en Medoc.  It smelled like a rugby player’s socks and tasted like oven cleaner.  “Oh well,” I told myself philosophically. “Duff bottle.  Can’t win ‘em all.”

But if we are to believe a story that ran throughout the British media last week, the fault was entirely mine.  Apparently I had opened the bottle on the wrong day of the week.  On another day the same wine would have smelled of tulips and tasted like nectar, or something like that. Read the rest of this entry »

You will find plenty of stories and legends surrounding wine, but almost none about grapes.  This is hardly surprising. A potent, aromatic liquid is mysterious, and therefore romantic. A piece of fruit has no mystery and is essentially dull, except perhaps as the subject of a still life.

One of the few exceptions is the Syrah grape. For centuries men have been telling colourful tales about its origins. In one version, the grape originates from Syracuse in Sicily.  Supposedly it was discovered there in the third century A.D. by the armies of the Roman Emperor Probus, then exported to a grateful world, eventually finding its true home in the Rhône valley in France. Read the rest of this entry »

Sipping this wine the other day, I reflected on how dramatically tastes and habits change. In the 1970s I drank Chablis a lot. Nowadays I drink it once every four or five years. This is not because I like it any less. On the contrary, I am sure I get far more out of it now than I did thirty years ago. So what has changed?

The short answer is “everything”.   If the past is another country, the 1970s are another planet.  Spacehoppers.  Jumbo flares. Chopper bicycles.  Kipper ties.  Even at the time it seemed an aesthetic wasteland; now it is beyond comprehension.

The popular wines of that period seem equally baffling, or at any rate many of them do.  Thinking back as dispassionately as I can, I should say they fell into three categories.  First you had the stinkers: Liebfraumilch; “Chianti” in raffia baskets; supermarket carafes from California.  All were indefensible.  Most have long since dribbled down the pissoir of history. Read the rest of this entry »