The flavor of chalk in wine

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 ...

The proposal reduces the mandatory density of planting from 8,000 vines per hectare to approximately 6,000. This would be accomplished by allowing 2.2 metres between rows, essentially removing every other row. The stated purposes include reducing the cost of maintaining the vineyards and therefore the time necessary to maintain them. This has been put forward as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and proponents estimate that such emissions would be 20% lower under the measure, leading som ...

Last year, there was much mirth on wine Twitter about a particularly excruciating tasting note. You’re right. The wine trade needs to get out more. But still… this one was a beauty. It began well enough – really quite beautiful, in fact. But before long the imaginative descriptions were getting more ornate and strained. It moved from poetic to meaningless before finishing with a reference to Burnt Norton – the first of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets – that put it firmly in Private Eye magazine’s ...