The flavor of earth in wine of Eastern Anatolia

Layers of colour in the sky before me: indigo, peach, salmon. In the rear-view mirror, the gold was catching fire. As I drove down through the lonely, Mistral-chilled vines of Babeau-Bouldoux towards nearby St-Chinian, I was thinking about what Christine Deleuze of Clos Bagatelle had just said. ‘When you came to visit 10 years ago,’ she reminded me, ‘you said we needed to wait another decade for a market breakthrough. Today you’ve said we need to wait another decade or two. So when, exactly, wil ...

An electronic dart was tossed at us recently by Decanter reader Tim Frances from Kent. It landed on the screen of our magazine editor Amy Wislocki; Amy lobbed it across the virtual room to me, suggesting a column-length reply. ‘Here’s a poser,’ Tim began. ‘How do your experts grade a wine that they find intellectually well made, but that they truly madly deeply dislike? I’ve tasted wines I can admire dispassionately, but would stab my feet with forks rather than drink them. Must be a conundrum f ...

In the face of rising temperatures and more frequent droughts, what can wine producers do to adapt their viticultural practices? Catalan producer Torres, which has emerged during the past decade as one of the global wine sector’s leading pioneers in tackling climate change, is experimenting with a range of creative ideas. Planting vines at higher altitudes is one option. The company is investing in cooler vineyards high in the mountains of the region. They have planted vines in Tremp at 950m in ...