Wines made from Chasselas grapes of Castille-et-Léon

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking up at some terraced vineyards in St-Joseph with an Australian friend. He remarked that he’d never seen a steep vineyard like this in his home country. Who could afford to rip out the trees, build the access roads, construct the terraces, and plant the vines, without being certain beforehand that the resulting wine could be sold at prices high enough to recoup the investment? It might not be the most romantic way of looking at it. But that’s the modern reality ...

The creation of an Instituto da Vinha e do Vinho dos Açores (IVVA), with headquarters in the island of Pico, follows the remarkable qualitative growth that the Archipelago of the Azores’ wine industry has been experiencing over the past decade. ‘People are excited about growing fruit and making wine here. There are about 300 growers producing their own fruit and a lot of small “garage” producers are starting. Some of them have worked and trained with us and are now making very interesting wines, ...

Cult Wines partnered with Olivier Bernstein to offer the ‘ultra-rare’ jeroboam from the 2017 vintage via its new CultX digital trading platform. An auction hammer price of £57,000 ($69,000) was just under the pre-sale high estimate of £60,000. Cult Wines said the jeroboam set a new benchmark price for Romanée-St-Vivant grand cru and was sold for the equivalent of £14,250 per 75cl bottle – again demonstrating the strength of the market for high-end Burgundy wines. ‘Given the scarcity ...