The Winery Little Stone of Illinois

Penfolds has announced it is to launch its second rare wine NFT with direct-to-consumer wines and spirits NFT platform BlockBar. The second rare release will comprise limited edition NFTs tied to 300 bottles of Penfolds Magill Cellar 3 Cabernet Shiraz from the 2018 vintage. Crafted under the watchful eye of chief winemaker Peter Gago, recipient of the Decanter Hall of Fame award last year, the wines will not be available from retail, nor Penfolds Cellar Doors. The release coincides with BlockBar ...

Disconcerting: I couldn’t forget this bottle for days afterwards. Still can’t. Back in August, wine critic Lin Liu MW (together with her partner Philippe Lejeune of Château de Chambert in Cahors) came to dinner, en route to a short holiday in Provence. One of the bottles Lin brought for us to try together was the 2018 Les Rocheuses, Parcelles No 5 et 6, from Château Le Rey in Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux. It came in a slope-shouldered bottle, not a classic Bordeaux bottle. We tried it with some R ...

Do growers make wine – or do markets? Growers, of course. Yet markets define the scope of the grower’s creative efforts by what they reward or sanction. When markets are neglectful and unresponsive, there’s little the grower can do but conform. It’s a problem the world over. Here’s an example. The river Moselle/Mosel rises to the wet west of the Vosges mountains, then curves in a long green arc heading north through Epinal, Metz and (along the left bank) Luxembourg’s Grand Duchy, turning east at ...