The flavor of bramble in wine of Algerie

The spirit was filled into a single ex-Sherry cask at the Speyside distillery in 1940, shortly before The Second World War forced The Macallan to close for the first time in its history. Bottled at 41.6% abv, only 288 decanters are available worldwide, featuring eye-catching packaging: a mouth-blown glass decanter sitting on a bronze sculpture of three hands, created by Scottish artist Saskia Robinson. The hands represent the distillery workers of 1940 who made the whisky; former Macallan chairm ...

Disconcerting: I couldn’t forget this bottle for days afterwards. Still can’t. Back in August, wine critic Lin Liu MW (together with her partner Philippe Lejeune of Château de Chambert in Cahors) came to dinner, en route to a short holiday in Provence. One of the bottles Lin brought for us to try together was the 2018 Les Rocheuses, Parcelles No 5 et 6, from Château Le Rey in Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux. It came in a slope-shouldered bottle, not a classic Bordeaux bottle. We tried it with some R ...

Bordeaux 2021 en primeur releases really picked up speed this week, and the launch of Ausone, Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Canon, Montrose, Léoville Poyferré, Beychevelle and La Gaffelière in recent days – to name just a few – has given prospective buyers plenty to look at. Let’s not forget the debut for Lafite Rothschild 2021, too. Ausone, Canon and Pichon Comtesse 2021 Ausone is St-Emilion wine royalty, of course, and UK merchant Bordeaux Index quoted a release price of £6,000 (12x7 ...