Winery Sainburys AUMerlot

As the summer season comes to a close and many wineries prepare for harvest, more than 400 active wildfires continue to burn in British Columbia, a handful of which the BC Wildfire Service designates ‘a potential threat to public safety’ in major cities, small towns and the vineyards in between. Sparked on 15th August, the season’s most destructive wildfire – the McDougall Creek Fire – had the province’s wine industry on its knees. Spreading over 12,000 hectares (30,000 acres), it initially thre ...

It was a spot of bedtime reading that did it. Desperately seeking a research topic to finish the Master of Wine course, a chapter in Don and Petie Kladstrup’s Champagne mentioned the 1911 riots: Champagne houses were razed by angry growers, the sabre-wielding French army charged down the streets of Epernay, and one of the biggest reasons for the discontent? Wine fraud. This was something I could get into. With my journalistic juices flowing, a scratch of the surface revealed a paucity of researc ...

He was 23 at the time, making his first steps with the family company, unknown in the UK; I was 31 and trying to get a new career going. I met him in Portugal; he became my first wine friend. I got to know his family, and he mine; we learned and explored together. His father Rolf ran the business – effectively; though he seemed more interested in his collections of corkscrews, antique firearms and American cars than in wine. Dirk’s flat was full of old typewriters. Ceramic frogs covered every av ...