Wines made from Grignolino grapes of Langhe

I’m busy, lazy or just tired… it’s half past twelve. I open the fridge and the same familiar labels smile up at me. The same with the repurposed coal hole under the front steps where the red wines live. I won’t tell you exactly what they are – although regular readers can have a pretty good guess. The ones that get mentioned least frequently are the ones that make an appearance on every routine day. When the soup (winter) or the salad (summer) comes out for a ‘working’ lunch, the bottle be ...

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 ...

Nowhere is the disparity in quality more evident this year than in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. A lot of Tradition bottlings were disappointingly lean and scrawny, but the best terroirs really shined, producing athletic, elegant wines of intensity and panache. Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for the top scoring Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2020 wines {"content":"PHA+PGEgaHJlZj0iaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGVjYW50ZXIuY29tL3dpbmUvZ3JhcGUtdmFyaWV0aWVzL2dyZW5hY2hlLWdhcm5hY2hhLyI+PHN0cm9uZz5HcmVuYWNoZTwv ...