The flavor of black raspberry in wine of Wallonie

How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...

The arrival of Covid and the ensuing lockdown restrictions had serious repercussions in the hospitality sector and severely disrupted supply chains, particularly in the drinks sector. Champagne, one of the world’s most recognisable and exported wines, was severely hit by travelling restrictions – which initially impacted the luxury sector Champagne dominates – and the closing of on-trade outlets. The 2020 slump As a result, in 2020, Champagne sales plummeted; a 10% decrease year-on-year in March ...

Bordeaux wine sales to the US reached a new record in 2021, jumping 67% to €349m ($390m), the Bordeaux wine council (CIVB) announced this week. A freeze on additional import tariffs and buyers’ thirst for highly-rated recent vintages helped Bordeaux to a ‘spectacular recovery’ in terms of shipments to the US, it said. Exports rose by 24% in volume last year to 247,000 hectolitres, equivalent to 33 million bottles. While reds dominate, the US has also become the biggest market for Bordeaux white ...