The Winery IL Bottame of Falanghina del Beneventano of Campanie

Whenever I visit Domaine Richaud, just outside the village of Cairanne, the winemaking team remind me of friends I made at free parties in the 1990s in fields and disused warehouses. I’m not talking dreadlocks and dogs on strings, but there’s always an anarchic frisson in the air. You get the impression they know how to enjoy themselves. Perhaps it’s to be expected, given the radical furrow Marcel Richaud has ploughed. He’s approaching 70 now, but still thrums with pent-up energy, his ice-blue e ...

Wine merchant and entrepreneur Duncan Vaughan-Arbuckle has passed away aged 83. Vaughan-Arbuckle was the founder and director of Vinopolis, the award-winning wine-themed visitor attraction which was located on London’s Bankside from 1999 to 2015. According to his daughter Desdemona Freeman his interest in wine began when he started trading food and wine in the mid-1970s. ‘He came from the business side of things but wine was clearly his favourite subject,’ she told Decanter. What he found partic ...

Pale salmon in colour, a basket full of freshly-picked summer berries backed by the tell-tale, mouth-watering English acidity – these pink delights are wines made for summer and glorious celebrations. In fact, rosé is likely to become ‘one of the most important styles made in Britain over the next 10 to 20 years,’ as Oz Clark put it in his 2020 book on English wines*. The top examples of English sparkling rosés tend to be made mainly from the red Champagne grapes using the traditional method, wi ...