Vinkara WineryBoḡazkere Reserve

Côtes du Rhône is a beloved brand among casual wine drinkers in both the UK and the US. It’s a mid-week mainstay. But as a Decanter Premium subscriber, your relationship with wine is likely to be rather more than casual… Are Côtes du Rhône wines really worth your attention? Some, definitely. Just as a revered appellation can elevate the value of a wine, a relatively lowly one can hold prices back. So when top estates bottle wines as Côtes du Rhône, they’re often sold at a fraction of the price o ...

On 28 June 2019, France recorded its highest ever temperature: 45.9 ̊ C (114.6°F) in Gallargues-le-Montueux, just outside the Costières de Nîmes appellation. Further north in Côte-Rôtie the mercury didn’t reach quite so high, but it was still a season marked by extreme heat. I was worried that the 2019 Côte-Rôties might resemble the jammy 2003s, a vintage I tend to avoid. Thankfully the vines coped much better this time around, and produced some exciting, exuberant wines – but not all. Some tipp ...

Vanilla was ranked as the most pleasant smell in a study involving 235 people and conducted by an international network of researchers, including those from the University of Oxford and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. This was closely followed by ethyl butyrate, ‘which smells like peaches’, said the researchers, who published their findings in the Current Biology journal. Vanilla notes can be found in several wine styles, such as some iterations of Chardonnay or Rioja, largely resulting from ...