Wines made from Duras grapes

If a good Cognac isn’t just for Christmas, it isn’t only for after-dinner sipping either. A top-quality VS or VSOP is also an excellent base for a refreshing aperitif or a palate-sharpening cocktail. You can keep it simple with ice and tonic, dial up the flavour with ginger ale – or move into more sophisticated territory by mixing a zesty Sidecar or twisted Manhattan. Hell, if you’re feeling flush, use an XO to create hedonistically rich and decadent Vieux Carré. Whether you’re buying for a love ...

In preparation for this column I tasted 46 reds in total, and – taking both quality and value into account – I can recommend 33 of them. Overall, the reds were less consistent than the whites, and although the lows were lower, the highs were higher. This tasting confirmed that it’s still possible to buy genuinely excellent northern Rhône reds for under £30 in the UK. That being said, it’s virtually impossible to find any Cornas, Côte-Rôtie or Hermitage for under £30 a bottle these days, but ther ...

‘When I started producing wine, the wineries were all in a very bad condition,’ said Askaneli Brothers president Gocha Chkhaidze, recalling the poor state of the Georgian wine industry shortly after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘There was inadequate sanitation, a lack of know-how and old-fashioned bottling lines. People were unable to make wine sustainably, vineyards were not sufficiently cared for, agronomists were unskilled and used to harvest the maximu ...