The last time we were in Chianti we bumped into Gianpoalo Motta. He showed us around his winery and gave us a look at the soil samples he had just done for his new vineyard. In the heart of Chianti Classico, here is a guy who does not care about DOCG and that famous rooster….
Category: red wine
Day 10 – Bodegas Bilhar
22 December 2021 Message on my phone. David’s kid has a COVID contact at school. Can’t pick us up. Can’t host us. If we ride out, cellar door opens at 9.00 am. Javi will host us. “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.” ― W.B. Yeats Eat breakfast. Buffet. Embarrassed myself. Again….
Quality Where it Counts
Time to embrace the uncool. Some brands just market well. Perhaps they hire brand professionals, use social media well, who knows. Labels count, branding is important. If a wine label hits a niche, finds a groove of popularity, it snowballs. Wine consumers seem less impressed by vineyard age, barrel selection, and winemaker skill than they…
2015 Bodegas Muga Rioja Reserva
Wanted: Rioja sifu. We have been drinking mostly Italian recently. Time to change things up a little. I have a bottle of Château La Nerthe Châteauneuf-du-Pape sitting in the fridge that I have been meaning to open. A region we have not explored often, I had heard good things about this bottle. I was just…
Gevrey Tuesday: 2005 Domaine Bruno Clair Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos-St-Jacques
My old friend Bruno. Part 3. I don’t recall where we tried our first Bruno Clair, what commune it was from, or who shared it with us. The bottle left a lasting impression. We have ended up drinking more Bruno Clair than any other Domaine. Burgundy can be difficult to procure in Australia. There is…
2005 Domaine Hudelot-Baillet Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Cras
Kings and Queens. Of all the wines from Burgundy, Gevrey-Chambertin is the commune we seek out most often. Certainly Shell’s favourite, the wines are masculine, yet elegant. The region deserves the title ‘King of Burgundy’. The Gran Crus and Premier Cru’s are consistently some of the great Burgundy’s of the world. The is reason Tuesday’s…
Chasing Vintages in the Hunter Valley
The other vintage of the century. In Australia, particularly the Hunter Valley, even the most resilient consumer gets vintage fatigue. As winemakers wrap up picking, the grapes are pressed, fermented, barrelled or bottled, the media rolls out some old winemaker from a famous Hunter Valley family and he declares ‘this was the best vintage in…
2014 Pio Cesare Barolo
Join the club. Some vintages are difficult. Despite the romantic notions associated with wine, grapes are fruit, they grow in vineyards and mother nature does not care what baumé your grapes are; when you need rain, and when you do not and how much sunshine there is in September. In 2014 around the Barolo region,…
Size Matters.
Little things. We don’t get back to Australia often. These images were from our last night in Sydney. We had dinner at a local Italian restaurant, I don’t recall the name. As we were walking through the side streets home we stumbled on a tiny bottle shop. Australia is dominated by huge chains, owned by…