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There are quite a few fortified wines available. By this I mean that distilled spirits, (mostly grape brandy), are added to bring the alcohol level up to 20 per cent or thereabouts. Well-known examples are port and sherry, but madeira and marsala s...

The 78,000 acres of vineyards in the Champagne district account for about 4 per cent of the overall total planted in France. Of the 19,000 grape growers, a little over 2,000 produce their own wines in small amounts that are referred to as “grower’s...

I’m thinking about a finishing touch for the Christmas dinner. If I get my way it will be English pudding, doused with cognac and set ablaze. We will need port. Graham’s was recently nominated by Drinks International magazine as the world’s most adm...

Christmastime and roast turkey, and now all you need is a few special wines. I will do my best to help. From the birthplace of chardonnay, and in an area where the first settlement goes back to 2500BC, I suggest Joseph Drouhin 2015 Meursault. This ...

If you are into Italian wines you may have heard of Gambero Rosso, which is a yearly publication that gives information on Italian wineries and rates their wines. Last year while in Milan I bought the 984-page edition for 2016. On its cover, it stat...

Wine Spectator magazine claims to pick their top 100 wines from more than 18,000 blind-tasted each year. Wine Enthusiast tastes approximately 22,000 and produces three lists: 100 Top Cellar Selections that are upper priced, 100 Best Buys and The Ent...

In 1898, Nicola Catena left famine-stricken Italy to find a new home in Argentina and it was his decision to plant Malbec in the high-mountain desert, as he felt that this grape would soar under such perfect conditions. Today his grandson Nicolas and...

Marriage is not always two people in love, it can also be a combination of two or more elements. Today my mind is on wine and food that marry well together and, jointly, are even better than the sum of their individual parts. I had a tasting this we...

The conditions seemed just right to the ancient Romans — the soils, the climate that was moderated by the ocean, and the Garonne river running through Bordeaux offered easy shipping. And so, around about 61BC, they planted the first vineyards. Much o...

Last week, much of the talk was of fires in California and I thought back to the event when Marvin Shankin, of The Wine Spectator, thanked about 2,000 of us for supporting New York City during a time when smoke was still swirling up from ground zero....