Wines made from Chardonnay grapes of Mátra

Last year, there was much mirth on wine Twitter about a particularly excruciating tasting note. You’re right. The wine trade needs to get out more. But still… this one was a beauty. It began well enough – really quite beautiful, in fact. But before long the imaginative descriptions were getting more ornate and strained. It moved from poetic to meaningless before finishing with a reference to Burnt Norton – the first of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets – that put it firmly in Private Eye magazine’s ...

According to lifestyle and happiness guru Gretchen Rubin, you ‘bring your own weather to a picnic’. Ms Rubin, I’d suggest, has never shivered under a tree watching raindrops turn her fish-paste sandwich to mush because the weather forecast was wrong. There are, it’s safe to say, picnics and Picnics. It’s a term that takes in everything from a rubber baguette in a French ‘Aire’ off the Autoroute du Soleil to a four-course spread while listening to opera at Glyndebourne. What’s definitely true is ...

The wine has been made in Australia by Pernod Ricard Australian sparkling wine specialist Trina Smith, working in collaboration with Mumm Chef de Caves, Laurent Fresnet, who visited Australia in July to taste the base wines made by Smith and discuss preferred components to make the blend. ‘This wine has been planned over several years and we had discussed that its profile would follow the Mumm signature style, which has always been about expressing Pinot Noir,’ said Smith. ‘When Laurent came to ...