The flavor of jalapeno in wine of Açores

I first contributed to Decanter back in November 1988; the hundreds of columns and articles I’ve written since constitute a journey of discovery. I squirm, though, if I’m described as a ‘wine expert’. Whatever wine knowledge we acquire quickly cools, congeals and crusts over, like custard or gravy, as the years pass. The wine world expands at a clip. Every vintage rewrites history. It’s the chance to share discoveries – not just about wines, but about people, places and the act of drinking itsel ...

Albino Jorge Sousa, owner of Port estate Quinta da Boeira, said his proposal for a new classification called ‘Full Body-Young Harvest’ Ports would inject cashflow earlier for Port producers. Jorge Sousa urged the Port sector to ‘wake up’ to meet what he said was growing demand for younger Ports from wine buyers and importers over the past two years. His proposal comes amid wider efforts to help reinvigorate the Port category. This year, Portugal’s Port and Douro Wine Institute, the I ...

The focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C  in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...