The flavor of hay in wine of Wallonie

Moneypenny, James Bond, Q. Not a bad trio for your wine to share the screen with in its latest cameo. I’ll try not to give too many spoilers if you haven’t yet seen No Time To Die, but I don’t think it gives too much away to say that Bond can’t resist swiping two generous glasses of Château Angélus (2005, although you don’t see the vintage on screen) for himself and Moneypenny from a bottle that Q had carefully opened for his date later that night. This is the third Bond film in which Angélus ha ...

Colin Hay, a professor of political economy with a special interest in the Place de Bordeaux, considers the different ways of approaching en primeur purchasing, ahead of this year’s 2021 campaign. Buying en primeur wines is a rather strange and, arguably, arcane system of buying and selling in which the consumer purchases the wine typically in the early summer following the vintage even though it will not be bottled and delivered for a further 12-18 months. It is, in effect, a futures mark ...

Is frost a bad thing? Yes; but it can have unexpected benefits. It can kill shoots, reducing yields, but it doesn’t necessarily affect quality. In cooler growing seasons, vines with fewer bunches can find it easier to ripen them. So given the inclement conditions that followed the frost in 2021, optimists might consider it advantageous that the crop load had been lightened. Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring Côte-Rôtie & Condrieu 2021 wines See all 400 Rhône 2021 tas ...