The Winery Laudet of Côtes du Marmandais of South West

How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...

Niagara’s summer? It’s hot, and sticky. I tried a walk near my hotel in mid-July but could only find a large retail mall. It was early; the shops were still shut. Even so, I had to dodge from awning to awning, avoiding the prosecuting sun. I’ve been there in autumn, too, which happened to be mellow and easeful – though it can also be wild, wind-whipped, rain-drenched. The ‘shoulder seasons’ are feared here: you never know what’s coming. The first time I went it was deepest winter. That made an i ...

The grapes have been picked and Argentina is able to file another successful harvest for 2022, to match the previous four years. However producers are reporting that 2022 was the most singular of recent vintages, with each region experiencing its own challenges. Mendoza ‘The 2021-2022 season reminds me of a good Hollywood movie,’ said Martín Kaiser, viticulturist at Doña Paula in Mendoza. ‘It certainly kept us entertained. Our hearts were in our mouths all the way through, but it had a great end ...