Wines made from Chenin blanc grapes of Illinois

Despite the very dry conditions, this feels like a more naturally balanced vintage than 2017, 2018 and 2019. Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for the top-scoring Crozes-Hermitage 2020 wines {"content":"PHA+VGhlIHdpbmVzIGFyZSBqdWljeSBhbmQgY29uY2VudHJhdGVkIHdpdGhvdXQgZmVlbGluZyBoZWF2eS48L3A+CjxwPjxkaXYgY2xhc3M9ImFkLWNvbnRhaW5lciBhZC1jb250YWluZXItLW1vYmlsZSI+PGRpdiBpZD0icG9zdC1pbmxpbmUtMSIgY2xhc3M9ImlwYy1hZHZlcnQiPjwvZGl2PjwvZGl2PjwvcD4KPHA+U29tZSBoYXZlIGEgZ3JlZW4gc3RyZWFrIGR ...

I’d visited Kakheti, Kartli and Imereti before – Georgia’s dominant central wine-producing zones; but never the wild exterior. From the ice-crisped cemetery grass of the 11th-century church of St George, dominating the mountaintop village of Mravaldzali, we looked north across the mountains of the Greater Caucasus, Europe’s highest. The silence, and the vista, was daunting. Hundreds of dry, drab valleys lost themselves in as many snowy peaks. Russia lay beyond. There was, apparently, a way over: ...

It was the 5th of March and the second week of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine. That morning, Mykhailo and Georgiy Molchanov, the father and son team of the Slivino winery in the Mykolaiv Oblast in Southern Ukraine went out to prune their vineyard. Lodged in one row of the vines was an unexploded Russian missile from a ‘Grad’ launcher. Meaning ‘hail’ in Russian, the name refers to the BM-21 systems that indiscriminately launch up to 20 of these missiles at once, something that has become a ...