• Bordeaux 2017 – Emerging en primeurs

    If you’re anyway interested in fine wine Bordeaux will be a heading bandied around many mails coming into your inbox this month. The 2017 en primeur campaign has started and the first Châteaux are gently releasing their prices. This will be an interesting campaign, not least because support for this vintage is (quite rightly) cautious thanks to late frosts decimating vineyards around the region. Members of the trade are looking for a reduction in prices of at least 20% to encourage take up of these wines, still sleeping in their oak barrels. One of the first to the post; Château Palmer

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  • Australia day(ish) in Dublin

    There’s a certain admiration I have for the Australians. They stick to their guns. Premium is the message and premium is the product. They ploughed on through a massive down turn in exports, not helped by the strong Aussie dollar and a global recession; coming out the other side with a stronger domestic market and a quality driven, pioneering wine industry ready to re-explore exports. Looking at the latest export report from Wine Australia; value is outstripping volume: it increased 15% to $2.56 billion versus an 8% rise in volume to 811 million litres. The average value of exports is also rising, sitting at $3.16 per litre; the

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  • So, what did we get up to in 2017? Our Christmas Newsletter.

    It’s Christmas time, Mistletoe and Wine…… It’s Christmaaaasssss…. Though all involved may well be frazzled and fried, exactly like a turkey on Christmas day, the big day is nearly here once more. Following that the arrival of a new year 2018; what will that bring? 2017 has been another year of ‘healthism’: This isn’t always a bad thing; I mean look at the athletes in our company: Damien Archer-Good our super salesman in the South completed his second Ironman, this time in Spain. An outstanding achievement for someone who likes to savour the succulence of a serious Sangiovese of an

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  • Burgundy, by our Swedish Sommelier selling wines in the West: Fanny Wennerstrom

    A blog by Fanny Wennerstrom. Our saleswoman in the West. For me, wine is my life but I have had little opportunity to actually do a proper professional wine trip to different regions with other knowledgeable wine lovers. When we were asked to go down to Burgundy, Chablis and Champagne to visit our suppliers, my heart did a flip! We all started off very early to be able to use the days to their maximum I guess and it was a great idea. We landed Wednesday morning in Paris and met up with a driver that was going to drive

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  • Experimentation in Chile

    When thinking about wines made from wild vines, amphora experimentalists and almost ‘natural’ fermentations, Anthony Tindal isn’t immediately seen as the flag waving follower of these more radical styles. Yet, new to our list are a number of small production parcels of wine from the outreaches of Chile, made by adventurous, educated winemakers looking to inject a bit of life into the Chilean wine trade and show the world that, while house wines remain the mainstay of Chilean production on export markets; there are many more strings to their bow. We had a selection of these wines open to taste at

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  • Flying winemaker Simon and our new Yecla blend San Simone

    Winemaking exploits and technical know how of our ‘flying winemaker’ Simon Tyrrell currently making the first vintage of San Simone in Yecla, Spain.

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  • Haut-Médoc, Moulis, Listrac, Pessac-Léognan, Sauternes & Barsac. Bordeaux 2015

    Tastings for Haut-Médoc, Médoc, Moulis and Listrac were held at Ch. Citran in the Haut-Médoc. A rural Château festooned with proud peacocks offered a refreshingly understated venue for the tasting. Looking at the communes case by case: Haut-Médoc showed good concentration for most with less expression on the nose than expected for some. The commune was very hard to define for 2015 overall and has proved to be more of a case of judging wine property by property. Listrac-Médoc generally had good structure in the form of integrated supporting tannins and sweet ripe fruit. Moulis-en-Médoc offered perfumed, expressive tones with the sort of open appeal

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  • Margaux and St.Julien. Bordeaux 2015

    Our notes on the Margaux and St.Julien communes from the Bordeaux 2015 en primeur tastings.

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  • Anthony flies to South America just in time for the harvest.

    It’s the time of year when we are travelling the globe sourcing wines, catching up with our winemaking friends around the world and learning about the latest vintages as we go. Anthony left the cool Irish Winter and headed over to Chile and Argentina for a couple of weeks this month. His reams of tasting notes and thoughts have been slightly lost in translation, so we’re picking the best bits and filtering them into this blog… a whistlestop tour of his trip. First up it was Argentina. Landing in Mendoza Anthony brought with him the worst rains the capital had

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  • Building up to Bordeaux 2015

    We’re in the gates, the flag is raised and the tension is mounting. What will happen when the gates open? Will we all bunch up on the first bend and then fall back when high prices are set or smoothly settle into position, finding our stride, finally emerging from the pack triumphant with new fire to ignite the 2015 en primeur campaign. Bordeaux 2015 is here. ‘The rule of five’* is a phrase that has been bandied around Bordeaux a lot of late. At first mainly due to the desperation of those in the trade hoping for a top vintage following four

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  • Domaine Jean Bousquet – The tale of a French family making wine in Argentina

    When you think about it Domaine Bousquet lacks the Spanish or Portuguese sounding origin that you would expect of a winery based in Argentina. This is because La Famile Bousquet hail from deepest Carcassonne. A wine family that strove to find the perfect site to grow wine. They wanted somewhere in the New World where they could experiment with varieties and rely on the constancy of settled weather. This place; decided in 1990 was Mendoza. It wasn’t however until 1997 that they purchased a parcel of land in Tupungato at 1200 metres (though at 110ha in French terms this was no

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  • Paris2Nice. Nigel pedals through France for the Laura Lynn Foundation

    Nigel, our Director of Fine Wine cycles from Paris to Nice for Charity.

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