The best wines of Sviri

St Hilaire is the patron saint of Mareuil-sur-Aÿ, the pretty Champagne village which is famous for scoring 99 on the Echelle des Crus. (This classification of Champagne vineyards was developed in the mid-20th century as a means of setting the price of grapes grown through the villages of the Champagne wine region.) Prime territory That the village missed out on grand cru status by one point is generally agreed to be an injustice – all the more so as it is home not only to the superlative Clos de ...

The Krondorf facility is where Burge’s enigmatic wine empire began in 1978, when he created the successful Krondorf Wines label in partnership with the late Ian Wilson. After selling the Krondorf brand to Mildara Blass Wines, he bought the winery site to establish Grant Burge Wines in 1988, a label that grew to produce 750,000 dozen wines a year and turn over $70m. Grant Burge Wines is a brand now owned by Accolade Wines, having been sold by Burge and his wife Helen in January 2015 [announcement ...

My book The Complete Bordeaux, which has been revised every five years, is soon to be published in its fourth edition. This may seem like excessive haste, given the scope of the book, but it is astonishing how rapidly changes can take place in the region. Burgundy, in contrast, is relatively stable, since most properties are family-owned and tend to stay that way. But not so in Bordeaux, where there are ample opportunities for newcomers to acquire established properties, as they have been doing ...