Some weeks ago I argued that this Chianti, like so many other red Tuscans, was no longer good value for money.  On reflection I think this was unfair.  I would still say that, in most years, these wines offer a poorer deal than wines of equal stature from, say, Chile or South Africa. But some years are better than others, and a few are exceptional in every sense.  This week’s vintage is undoubtedly one such.

I have heard the Antinori family called the Rothschilds of Italian wine.  It would be truer to call the Rothschilds the French Antinoris.  The Rothschilds have been prominent only since the early 1800s, and they entered the world of wine in the 1850s.  The Antinoris have been growing wine since the late 1300s. Twenty-six generations later, the Antinori family owns vineyards in Tuscany, Umbria, Piedmont, southern Italy, and even California. (more…)

Those who are supposed to know about these things agree that times are getting tougher. Economies are ultimately shaped by how people feel, and right now the predominant feelings are gloom and foreboding.

For those of us who can remember the 1970s the present worries seem eerily familiar. Soaring fuel prices, terrorism, environmental hysteria, the fear that our society and culture are sliding into a moronic abyss - today’s headlines take me straight back to the happy world of my teens. (more…)

The Chilean house of Cousiño-Macul has been going since the mid 1850s. It is still run by its founding family, using vines imported from Bordeaux at the time the house began. Thanks its to location and climate, Chile is immune to the Phylloxera aphid which destroyed most of Europe’s vines later in the nineteenth century. So the wines of Cousiño-Macul offer a direct link to a much earlier age of winemaking.

The connection used to be very apparent in the house’s flagship wine, Antiguas Reservas. This was an old-fashioned, idiosyncratic red that aged very well and was frequently compared to good Graves. That it cost only a fraction of the price of Graves made it especially appealing. (more…)

By general consent 2005 was one of the greatest Burgundy vintages. Some are calling it the greatest ever. The richness, complexity and sheer majesty of these wines have been praised universally, even by those normally sceptical about Old World vino. The result, inevitably, has been record prices. Good Burgundy was never cheap, but the 2005 top growths now fetch the same as vintage Champagne.

Billionaires will doubtless be very happy. So too will professional wine critics, whose job lets them drink the very best. That just leaves the remaining 99.99999% of us. Our acquaintance with the better-known 2005 Burgundies will be confined to a wistful stare in our wine’s merchant’s, followed by a vicious gasp as our gaze settles on the price sticker. (more…)

Odd region, Ribera del Duero. A plateau over 2500 feet above sea level, enduring blisteringly hot days and frosty nights, this is not the first place one would choose to grow grapes. Yet since the 1860s it has produced Spain’s most prestigious wine. Vega Sicilia is a blend of Tinto Fino - the local name for the Tempranillo grape - and Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec. Recent vintages cost around $400 a bottle.

You might suppose that so renowned a wine would have encouraged a horde of local imitators, as Biondi-Santi did with Brunello di Montalcino. But there have been no Vega Sicilia copycats, and until comparatively recently the Duero valley remained a backwater. This all changed in the 1970s, thanks largely to one man, Alejandro Fernandez. His Pesquera, a 100% Tinto Fino, changed the region’s fortunes. (more…)

Most of the big political arguments have their counterparts in wine. Take the question of trade. One of the loudest debates of our time is between those who favour governmental control and those who would rather trust market forces. In this argument the world of wine perfectly mirrors the world of politics, with continental Europe obstinately in the first camp, the New World unthinkingly in the second.

Italy, France and Spain require that wines be classified by government-appointed experts, and that each wine label reveal its classification. The consumer must be sure whether he is paying for a vin ordinaire or a grand cru. He must be certain that if a wine comes from a particular location, it will only contain the prescribed amount of a certain grape. Armies of bureaucrats enforce these rules. Anyone who disobeys faces a stiff fine, perhaps even imprisonment. (more…)

It is now around thirty years since the great Tuscan wines were discovered by the rest of the world, and their prices are no longer competitive. Delicious as they are, Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile, and the so-called Supertuscans – Tignanello, Sassicaia and the like – nowadays offer poor value for money.

Part of the blame lies with the Euro, which has been grossly overvalued since its inception. But mostly this is a problem of fashion. Ever since the British and the Americans fell in love with Tuscany, they have all wanted souvenirs of their summer holiday in some picturesque casa colonica. What better memento than a bottle or ten of those smoky reds they drank with their bruschette and T-bone steaks? Up went the price, and the rest of us had to look elsewhere for affordable good-quality vino. (more…)

Though undoubtedly an art, winemaking is not Art with a capital A. It is one of the great crafts, like cabinet-making or ceramics. I know many people dispute this, especially the young, whose duty is to challenge all established categories. Having joined countless undergraduate arguments on this subject, I have no wish to set off another. I simply make the point that if you admit any difference between Art and Craft – and I think you should – then you must accept that winemaking belongs to the latter, not the former.

That said, Art and Craft do share many qualities. One is the ability to shake prejudice. For instance, this week’s wine has shaken my mild but deep-rooted prejudice towards Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian thinker and esotericist. (more…)

The Mourvèdre grape has a bewildering range of aliases. In Spain, from where it is thought to originate, it is known as Monastrell. In Portugal and much of the New World it is called Mataro, after the Spanish town of Mataró. Most of France calls it Mourvèdre, after another Spanish town, Murviedro. But in some parts it goes by the splendid name of Estrangle-Chien: “dog strangler”.

The grape is prone to rot, and so does best where the summers are fierce and there are strong winds to keep it dry. Windswept southern France is ideal: in the Rhône it is blended with Grenache to make wines such as Châteauneuf-du-Pape; in Provence it is the principal grape of Bandol.

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Italians hate simplicity. They abhor it as vampires do garlic. Consider the case of Montepulciano, one of Italy’s more interesting grape varietals. It shares its name with a village in Tuscany which makes one of the country’s great wines, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Any reasonable person might suppose that Vino Nobile was made from the Montepulciano grape. They would be wrong. The Noble Wine of Montepulciano is actually made from Sangiovese. It may contain lesser amounts of Canaiolo, Mammolo and Trebbiano. Occasionally it even contains some Gamay. But the one grape you will never find in it is Montepulciano.

Indeed, the Montepulciano grape is scarcely known in Tuscany. Its real home is Abruzzo, on the Adriatic. This province is less fashionable than Tuscany, though no less beautiful and with as much to offer. The same is true of its wines.  The best of these is Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a big, fleshy red that really is made from the Montepulciano grape. (more…)