The flavor of wood varnish in wine of Don Valley

The US still comes top on the list of which countries drink the most wine overall, according to to preliminary figures released this week by the International Organisation of Vine & Wine (OIV).  Wine consumption in the US crept up by 0.7% in 2021, to 33.1 million hectolitres (3.31 billion litres), the OIV said in a report on the state of the industry. World wine consumption grew by the same margin, to hit 236 million hectolitres (mhl), or 23.6bn litres, although trends varied by nation. That ...

Brad Pitt has filed a lawsuit against Angelina Jolie at a Los Angeles court regarding her sale of a stake in Provence winery Château Miraval last year, according to media reports, including in Bloomberg (via Associated Press) and the Los Angeles Times. There had been speculation for several years about how Pitt and Jolie’s divorce proceedings would affect their joint ownership of Miraval, which they acquired in 2008. It was the Hollywood couple’s wedding venue but the estate has also gained a re ...

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 ...