The 2010 Brunello di Montalicino vintage has received a standing ovation from winemakers and critics alike. But it is not easy to generalise about a vintage in Montalcino. It is rare to hear unanimous praise. 

Locked out of my house the night before I left for Bordeaux to taste en primeurs, I decided the best way to pass the time was to eat at my local Italian restaurant and read up on last year’s vintage conditions. I always wonder whether customers read vintage conditions. Are they only interesting to people who understand how a plant grows? The basic ideas: the sun increases sugar, too much rain causes mildew, different soil types can hold water to the roots differently – the same applies to any fruit, and grapes, after all, are a fruit. Perhaps if you listen to gardening programs on the radio this will be interesting. I am sure for a lot of people their eyes gloss over the vintage reports. If you can be bothered to read it then I recommend you do because it does unlock many mysteries of the wine. It’s not all about the weather. This year it is also about the technology. The current taxation law in France encourages wineries to plough profits back into …

It’s that time of year again. My favourite blogs of 2012 are niche but I have found these blogs essential in 2012 for their unique and informed perspectives:

I didn’t want to say anything about this. Not because I don’t think it is extremely poor judgement by the designer to represent The 50 Most Powerful Women in Wine with a silhouette under a glass like some sort of rare insect in the shape of the neon sign advertising for the local strip club. No, it’s because I thought we were beyond this. A long time ago. Snore. But I must. The truth is I started this blog (and this is one of my first posts) as a reaction to a website project I was copy writing for in 2007 called “Women 4 Wine.” The only catharsis was to write what I really thought about after the spending the day writing through the lens of “women” or what was perceived as what they want. For this project, the wines always given to me were Rose, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio (!). Also, my brief was to de-emphasize the technical aspect in the copy and emphasize the lifestyle. I could feel all this talk about picnics …

Argh! I haven’t been able to update the blog and it’s the pips! Thank you for all the kind emails asking about Wine Woman & Song. I’ve been working in a new day job, doing a lot of writing for http://www.bibendum-times.co.uk – which I now look after. I will post again. In the meantime, here is a little entertainment from that most maligned part of the grape, The Seeds. Like a very best wine, it is a strip-tease, honest-to-goodness. Hope to see you back here soon, and thank you so much for the support.

Imagine the bubbles of Franciacorta are not spherical but square and you’ll have the true idea of Italy’s premier sparkling wine. This is one of the most disciplined DOCG regions in the North of Italy, between Milan and Venice, and has a super-commitment to quality that is almost frightening if you expect Italy to be a fun Read more

The language of wine in Tuscany is also very rich, with a long tradition of culture and history with interesting local idiosyncrasies, yet the recent past, dominated by James Suckling, Wine Spectator and their lists of Super-Tuscans, has left many in Tuscany not singing but mumbling… click here for more on Vinissima

Rumours from the hills of Montalcino today is Colle Massari is acquiring Piero Palmucci’s Poggio di Sotto. An elderly gentleman with no offspring interested in taking over the vineyard, it could soon be in the hands of Claudio Tipa, winemakers from Maremma, part of the family who are also patrons of Alinghi team in the America’s Cup…. click here for more on Vinissima.net

Parma is VIOLETS. Aged hams, dark chocolate, profumo, the fizz of Lambrusco. Violets became popular under Maria-Luiga, the Duchess of Parma and second wife of Napoleon, whose presence can be felt everywhere walking along the prosciutto-coloured streets…. click here for more on Vinissima  

As with the Italian white wines at Waitrose Spring Tasting 2011, the red wines are judged on my working idea of bella figura. Nearly all the wines at Waitrose are technically good, but what Italian reds can you find here that transcend the mundane and show individual style and a little extra flourish? 

I may bang on until I am blue in the face about food matching, but the Anglo-Saxon way is not to think about wine as something to match with food. We can fight against it by suggesting foods, but let’s be pragmatic. What is the best way to drink wine if you are not going to eat much more than a packet of crisps?

Recently I caught up with Colin Thorne, manager at the new wine tasting shop, Vagabond Wines in Fulham Broadway, London. There you’ll find 100 wines to choose from, starting at £1 a taste. We decided upon the amazing Vermentino by Laura Aschero from the Liguria region in Italy, which can be found on the coast south of Milan, near Genoa. Keep going west across the border to France, and Provence, where there is another expression of Vermentino, called Rolle… It’s a very Mediterranean taste and is one of my favourite wines on the weekend to have at lunch on Sundays with friends. This one is a unique and elegant wine that tastes of the coast of Liguria: Laura Aschero is a genius. I hope you have the chance to enjoy it, too. Baci X Juel P.S. Sorry for the fairly grainy, low-budget, low-tech quality of the video. Unfortunately this is the criteria for the Sundance Film Festival’s wine tasting video category… Tasted at Vagabond Wines: 18-22 Vanston Place London SW6 1AX 020 7381 1717

Ciao Ragazzi, A friend asked me a very good question: How do I choose an Italian wine when I am in a supermarket if I have never tasted it before? Here I give a very basic guide to Italian Wine Labels and some of the difficulties you may encounter… tasting a white wine from Umbria called an Orvieto that I picked off the shelf yesterday in Marks & Spencer. Baci, Juel x Ps. Chianti and Valpolicella are regions, Orvieto and Montalcino are towns ;-)

Jump for stars!! Find the Princess! Dodge the King! Like a Super Mario, Wine Woman & Song grew twice in size this year to take on extra hits and new worlds. Here were the highest-scoring Fire Flowers from 2010 (this year’s most-read posts):

This wine had the place smelling like Christmas for a week. Can I give you a tasting note from broken bottle? At around £120 – £140 per bottle, I have to at least try… I was down on my hands and knees licking the floor. Risking shards of glass in my tongue just to have a taste. Excellent colour for a Barolo, pale rose colour, it hardly stained the floor… Spice and pine, leather, cinnamon and cloves, if only Gaja could make a “2004 Conteisa Room Deodoriser”. A very expensive way to give a place ambience, but I am sure it would be a great success: everyone commented how wonderful the place smelled. Dear reader, I cried. What would you do??

Being a family with a well-recorded ancient past must not always be pleasant, but at least, like old photos or tear-stained letters, the evidence does not require many words. True, such things as archives, documentaries, and fashion can cause trouble over the years. And it definitely has for the Frescobaldi family at one time or another in its 700 year history. But avoiding disaster in the long-term requires a checklist as short as that for any winemaker: soil, weather, location. Looking at my notes from lunch with the Marchesi Leonardo Frescobaldi and

By delicious chance, just three weeks before the year finishes, I finally tasted the number one wine on my 2010 Wish List: Tokaji Essencia (1993).   Well.   Technically, 1993 is a good vintage for Essencia. But a good vintage is never really enough of an explanation, and unfortunately, vintage is not enough to justify this wine. Essencia is meant to be one of the world’s treasures. The worst thing about it was it is a great wine but it had lost its way only through a lack of love – whether because communist vineyard management was still having an effect on the grapes at the time or whether this particular bottle had been stored shabbily and without care.   Or was it me? Have my expectations changed over the year? Probably. Like any wine obsessive, there is a danger of becoming too over-critical. However, tasting the Essencia while spoon-fed lashings of Crème Brûlée at Chez Bruce softens even the most analytical stance… Despite my misgivings, it manages to shine with a tangy, overripe effect, …

When Bill Grundy famously interviewed the Sex Pistols for ITV in 1976 he asked Siouxsie Sioux, was she worried or was she enjoying herself… “Enjoying myself,” she replies. But then the conversation controversially turns on a few swear words and the interviews ends at only 1 minute 30 seconds. “My wines are not for everybody. My wines are not friendly. They are preposterous,” answers Charles Smith from K Vintners to my question whether the reds at 15% alcohol are a true expression of Walla Walla, Washington State. This was to be a short interview. As I have not tasted many wines from Washington State, I have had to come to my own conclusions. Well, are they as preposterous as the winemaker says? Hardly. They are perfectly nice. In particular, the Viognier is a quiet little floral with good acidity and restrained manners. We had the Viognier with lobster and it was the best food match of the evening, singing together more like Westminster Abbey choir than a DIY thrash punk band. If this is punk, …

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” – Henry Miller Why drink Bordeaux at £10-15? Many other wines stride in with hi-how-are-you blasts. At this price, there are many choices for a medium-bodied red wine from nearly every corner of the globe. That’s why some are asking, is Bordeaux even relevant anymore? Especially those looking for quick teenage kicks. Many times, I have called Bordeaux in this price range Old Man Claret. Sometimes planky oak, sometimes contemptuous fruit. But a good bottle – and there are many good examples, especially from Listrac, Lussac St. Emilion, Graves and Cru Bourgeois, etc – are safe, reliable, well-made and good company. However, I will admit it often does not make me want to sing and dance on table tops. What I like about it though, is it is more like going to dinner with a friend you’ve known for twenty years: there’s little need to always talk and constantly re-introduce yourself. If you are seriously interested …