The flavor of grapefruit in wine of Henan

The Roussillon is home to a range of wine styles, at varying price points. Sweet fortified wines (vin doux naturel) used to dominate production, with still dry wines (vin sec) in the minority. In the last 30 years, however, this has completely changed, and vin sec now makes up the majority (80%) of the Roussillon’s output. The recent Wines of Roussillon tasting, held in London, not only highlighted many good quality dry wines being produced, but also cemented the idea that Roussillon whites are ...

Sauternes is one of the world’s most respected fine wines. Old vintages can fetch high prices at auctions, and Château d’Yquem is the quintessential show-off bottle on Instagram. As people’s drinking habits change however and the appeal of sweeter wines lessens, the public is increasingly drifting away from Sauternes. ‘Over the last decade, we’ve seen consumption going down,’ confirmed Miguel Aguirre, vineyard manager of the historical Sauternes château, La Tour Blanche. ‘We produce more than we ...

No yeast; no wine. Yeast is the only ‘wine maker’ in that sense. Imagine a world in which we had to content ourselves with tasting and drinking grape juice: sweet, with no ability to alter our mood, and largely undifferentiated in sensual terms. Our interest would evaporate. Mysteriously, only yeast can unlock personality and even origin in must. Unlock? Perhaps even that word is misconceived. Yeast is, with grape juice, the progenitor of wine. It is not neutral, abstract, a twinkly wand that tr ...