Wines made from Müller-Thurgau grapes of Pfalz

Of all the columns I’ve written this year, this one should have been the easiest to write: open my tasting notes file, sort by year 2021, sort by score, select the top ten highest scoring wines, copy and paste. Go to the pub. But it’s not that simple. Some wines are technically perfect and undeniably excellent, wines I respect greatly that deserve their high scores – but on a personal level, they leave me a little cold. Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Matt Walls’ top ...

Domestic sales dipped by 1.7% year-on-year to 138.4 million bottles, but exports surged by 4.3% to 187.5 million bottles. That pushed the overall category into modest volume growth, with sales up from 321.8 million bottles in 2021 to 325.9 million last year. Value sales also smashed through the €6bn (£5.26bn) barrier for the first time, suggesting that the industry has now emerged relatively unscathed from the pandemic. Maxime Toubart, co-president of the Comité Champagne, hailed the figures as ...

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 ...