The Domaine des Amphores of Costières-de-Nîmes of Rhone Valley

In 2001, George W. Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States. Meanwhile in the UK, Tony Blair led the Labour Party to its second landslide victory. A lot can change over the course of 20 years. According to many Rhône winemakers and wine collectors, this is how long a bottle of Hermitage should lay undisturbed until you open it. Is it really worth the wait? I recently tasted 11 Hermitage 2001s – seven red, two white, two sweet – to test the 20 year hypothesis and see how these ...

How many wines can you name that contain over 20 grape varieties? Here’s one: Château de Montfaucon’s Lirac, Vin de Monsieur le Baron. Having tasted every vintage back to 2007, I can state with certainty that it’s one of Lirac’s greatest red wines. If this sounds like faint praise, it’s not meant to. Admittedly, Lirac doesn’t currently have the same cachet as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but it’s just on the other side of the Rhône river and has some pockets of exceptional terroir. What’s more, while th ...

Onwards, upwards. The roads get narrower, the corners get tighter. I step out of the car when I finally reach the winery and the air is so much fresher here. I go to take a sip from my water bottle and a gust of wind makes it whistle. I stand with Thomas Jullien and we look over the vineyards. It’s not yet spring, and the vines look little more than sticks. ‘It’s a lunar landscape at the moment,’ he says, as a friend’s flock of 300 sheep has just passed through to graze on every scrap of green b ...