Grape&Grain
12 Wines of Christmas: Sicily
Peter Ranscombe‘s 12 Wines of Christmas continue with organic bottles from Sicily. COMING from the north of Italy, brother and sister Stefano and Marina Girelli noticed some immediate differences when they bought the Santa Tresa estate on Sicily in 2001. While their grapes in Trentino need to soak up every hour of sunshine they can…
Read More12 Wines of Christmas: Gimblett Gravels
Peter Ranscombe continues trekking through his 12 wines of Christmas with bottles from the Gimblett Gravels in New Zealand. LORD of the Rings has a lot to answer for. Watching Frodo gurn his way across Middle Earth could lead filmgoers to conclude that New Zealand has a uniform cool climate of snow-capped mountains and turf-roofed…
Read More12 wines of Christmas: Rutherglen
Peter Ranscombe continues his 12 wines of Christmas with “stickies” from Rutherglen in Australia. ONE of the most fun aspects of writing about wine from a Scottish point of view is tracing how our ancestors and our place names pop up around the globe. Arguably the most famous of those connections is Rutherglen, the South…
Read More12 Wines of Christmas: Argentina
Peter Ranscombe continues his journey through the 12 wines of Christmas with top-end bottles from Argentina. TAKE a walk along a supermarket wine aisle and it’s easy to dismiss Argentina as a land full of simple malbec. Row after row of cheap and usually very cheerful red wines demonstrate how the country and the grape…
Read More12 wines of Christmas: California
Peter Ranscombe begins his journey through the 12 wines of Christmas with Marimar Estate in California. HEAR the name “Torres” and its natural to think of the family’s Spanish vineyards. Yet the country’s most famous winemaking dynasty is now arguably equally as famous for its vines in Chile. What’s perhaps less well-known is that the…
Read MoreWine to Dine – January 2021 – The Seafood Shack
Scottish Field wine columnist Peter Ranscombe reels in five bottles that will make a splash with seafood. SEAFOOD is always one of the most exciting “star ingredients” when it turns up in the food feature in the printed Scottish Field magazine – which is also available to buy online. There’s something very special about wines…
Read MoreAlexander Wines serves up Christmas with a twist
Peter Ranscombe pops the corks on some exciting alternative festive choices. I’M AS guilty as anyone else when it comes to reaching for the same old favourites at Christmas. A bottle of Chablis, a bottle of pinot noir, and a bottle of something with bubbles in it, and I’m usually set for the festivities to…
Read MoreAcceptable in the 80s: Errazuriz’s cabernet
Peter Ranscombe climbs back into his vinous time machine to join a virtual ‘vertical’ tasting of wines from Chile. DO YOU remember 1989? It was the year that Margaret Thatcher road tested her “poll tax” in Scotland. It was the year that David Hasselhoff single-handedly brought down the Berlin Wall. And it was the year…
Read MoreDo wine glass shapes affect taste?
Peter Ranscombe sticks his snout into various shapes of glasses to see if they affect the smell and the taste of popular wines. IT’S the second-most common question I get asked – right after “How do you keep you hair so soft and bouncy?” “Does the shape of the glass affect the taste of the…
Read MoreWhat does wine taste like in a cardboard bottle?
Peter Ranscombe puts a wine that comes in innovative packaging through its paces. BACK in June, Scottish wine merchant Woodwinters revealed it would be stocking an Italian wine – in a cardboard bottle. Packaging maker Frugalpac has come up with a container made from 94% recycled cardboard, with the liner inside accounting for the remaining…
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