The Winery Charles(FR) of Châteauneuf-du-Pape of Rhone Valley

Establishing a vineyard isn’t something you just rush into these days. Identifying the right site, carrying out soil analysis, selecting suitable rootstocks and varieties, procuring equipment… We’ve made a lot of progress in the past 80 years. But perhaps we overthink such things. Some estates, such as Domaine Font de Courtedune, have grown organically, with major decisions often being made for practical, rather than stylistic, reasons. And the results, from Côtes-du-Rhône to Châteauneuf-du-Pape ...

UK-based Berry Bros & Rudd said it will start selling capsule-free wine this month, beginning with its ‘Own Selection’ Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2019, produced for the company by Château La Nerthe. The fine wine and spirits merchant said it also planned to remove capsules from other Own Selection products in a phased initiative that aims to reduce packaging, preserve materials and avoid waste. While some wines for longer-term ageing are considered to benefit from capsules, Berry Bros & ...

I’d like to say we took advantage of the lockdown and its related commotion to do a stock-take, explore new avenues, turn over intriguing stones, widen and deepen our drinking, taking careful notes as we went. Sadly, no. I won’t say we got stuck in a rut, but we did tend to stick with comfort wines – and “comfort”, in our case, means familiar. Regular readers of this quarterly column can probably guess the labels on the resulting empties. We have a wider range of comfort foods, I’m afraid, than ...