Grape&Grain
Time travelling with Bolney’s Blanc de Blanc bubbles
Peter Ranscombe straps himself into a vinous DeLorean to sample five vintages of Bolney’s Blanc de Blanc English sparkling wine. ONE of the most exciting elements of opening an older bottle of wine is remembering at what stage of your life you were in the year that the grapes were harvested. Where were you living?…
Read MoreFrom riesling to the Smiths: Wine, food and music matching
Food isn’t the only match for wine – you can also pair it with music too, as Peter Ranscombe finds out. WHAT happens when you mix wines from Alsace, food from a French bistro and Brit Pop from the 1980s? The answer is you get Foulques Aulagnon, the export manager at CIVA, the trade body…
Read MoreOddbins goes au natural
Peter Ranscombe salutes Oddbins’ new range of natural wines. LOVE them or hate them, natural wines are here to stay. There’s a lot of confusion over what constitutes a “natural” wine – and how organic, biodynamic and natural wines sit together. Probably the most useful definition focuses on “low intervention” wines, in which the grape…
Read MoreSmall is beautiful at Domaine Ferret
Just because a small producer is owned by a big company doesn’t mean it can’t create incredibly serious wines, as Peter Ranscombe discovers. WRITING about business as well as drinks has made me a bit sceptical when it comes to big-name wines. Time after time, I’ve seen bottles with eye-catching labels and creative monikers, only…
Read MoreEnjoying the character of Bolney’s pinot noir
Peter Ranscombe gets a rare chance to compare four vintages of English pinot noir from the Bolney Estate in Sussex. DRINKING the same bottle of supermarket wine week after week can sometimes make it easy to forget how much the taste of a wine can vary from year to year. Big producers will blend wine…
Read MoreCalifornia wine fair highlights
Ahead of a fundraising event on Sunday for the wildfire relief efforts, Peter Ranscombe looks back at some of his highlights from the recent California wine fair. IT’S always hard when you see images of smoke and flames engulfing people’s homes. The wildfires that have swept through Northern California over the past fortnight have claimed…
Read MoreSecond Chance Summer yields first-rate wines
After starring in a BBC Two documentary series, Rob Seddon has launched his own company, exporting Italian wines to the UK and Ireland, as Peter Ranscombe find outs. I’LL confess that I’m not a big fan of reality TV, but one show had me hooked this spring. BBC Two’s Second Chance Summer followed the adventures…
Read More1821: A new number for wine in Edinburgh
Peter Ranscombe joins one of Italy’s venerable wine families in Edinburgh for the launch of its inaugural ‘wine hotel’. EDINBURGH last night became home to The Wine House Hotel 1821, the first in a chain of hostelries being opened by the Zonin family. Zonin is best known for its prosecco, Italy’s most-famous sparkling wine, but…
Read MorePowell & Son: Two heads are better than one
Australian winemaker Dave Powell has teamed up with his eldest son, Callum, to create wines from Australia’s Barossa and Eden valleys with freshness and fruit purity, writes Peter Ranscombe. THE phrase “colourful character” could have been coined to describe Dave Powell, the tall Australian winemaker with his grey beard and ponytail holding court in Le…
Read MoreNever judge a whisky by its label
Peter Ranscombe samples Loch Lomond distillery’s range of single malts at the Edinburgh International Festival. Trying something new is the best part of the Fringe. Going to see a show that you would never normally watch is half the fun of the world’s largest arts festival. And so it should be for Scotch too. I’ve…
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