The Winery Despunte of Valle de la Orotava of Iles Canaries

How do we define a great winemaking estate? Extraordinary terroir, winemaking excellence and a long track record for quality are three criteria that spring to mind. Clos de la Bonnette can only claim the first two, as Isabelle Guiller-Montabonnet has only been making wine since 2009. Scroll down to see Matt Walls’ tasting notes and scores for eight Clos de la Bonnette wines As for the third element, however, I suspect it’s only a matter of time. {"content":"PC9wPgo8cD48ZGl2I ...

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 ...

Albino Jorge Sousa, owner of Port estate Quinta da Boeira, said his proposal for a new classification called ‘Full Body-Young Harvest’ Ports would inject cashflow earlier for Port producers. Jorge Sousa urged the Port sector to ‘wake up’ to meet what he said was growing demand for younger Ports from wine buyers and importers over the past two years. His proposal comes amid wider efforts to help reinvigorate the Port category. This year, Portugal’s Port and Douro Wine Institute, the I ...