The Winery Philippe Maye of Listrac-Médoc of Bordeaux

For the first time ever, Decanter is offering readers and wine lovers alike the chance to see behind the scenes of our renowned panel tastings and experience first hand what it means to taste like an expert. Decanter’s panel tastings are one of the most rigorous exercises in blind tasting, where a panel of three experts taste and score up to 100 wines a day, based on criteria set by the Decanter editorial team. We’re delighted to announced that this autumn will see the start of our n ...

The focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C  in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...

There’s no doubt that 2021 was a challenging vintage. Most explanatory statements or technical sheets handed out over the past few weeks have mentioned the unfavourable, oft disastrous weather conditions, the sometimes very low and disheartening yields and the slightly varied or unusual blends on offer in 2021. Difficulties faced by vignerons both inside and outside of the cellar have been explained in detail as has the raft of highly important decisions needed be made throughout the year, ...