Harpers Wine & Spirit Trade News

The Analyst

Published: 18 January, 2007

Real food and fine wines' may be the boast of gastropubs up and down the land, but few will deliver as fully on the promise as The House.

Uncorked - Make the most of it

Published: 18 January, 2007

A dodgy Chilean peso, a windy rand, gluts in Australia, complete inertia in Argentina and revolting winemakers in southern France. With the possible notable exception of California (see profile on Joe Gallo - Harpers 12th May), it seems that the London International Wine & Spirits Fair can't come soon enough.

Uncorked Make themost of it

Published: 18 January, 2007

New World good...

Published: 18 January, 2007

You will recall what happened, that final twist in the porcine tail, in Orwell's Animal Farm? The pigs ended up becoming the spitting image of the oppressive humans the rest of the animals sacrificed everything to resist. A similar irony is at work in the New World of wine.

Cool chronicles

Published: 18 January, 2007

Dotted with marine fossils and rugged limestone outcrops, the other-worldly terrain of the Waitaki formed one of the dramatic backdrops in the recent Narnia film. Back in reality, this landscape of limestone and north-facing slopes is starting to shape wines from New Zealand's newest wine region which could prove equally dramatic.

The City

Published: 18 January, 2007

You can almost hear the anguish in London and Paris as Diageo and Pernod Ricard, the world's largest wines and spirits companies, watch the dollar plunging in value. Their next set of results will contain the almost habitual caveat that they would both have made larger profits had the greenback shown any signs of resilience and approached a normal' level.

Perplexed by Parker's points

Published: 18 January, 2007

The news of Robert Parker's scores for the 2005 vintage spread like wildfire across the world, sending Bordeaux into a mixture of joy, confusion and, in some cases, outrage - but I am perplexed by some of Parker's opinions.

South Africa shorton goodwill

Published: 18 January, 2007

I am currently residing in East Anglia, where I am working my passage in the wine business. As a resident of South Africa I am enjoying the opportunity of being able to buy some great European wines, while at the same time taking the opportunity to promote those of my homeland too.

Champagne Agents respond to criticism

Published: 18 January, 2007

I write following our review of the 13th Annual Champagne Tasting at the last Champagne Agents' Association Committee meeting, and in response to various comments and articles in the press, not least Tom Stevenson's London fizzically challenged' (Harpers, 21 April).

Figure-hugging vintage

Published: 18 January, 2007

The obsession with numbers seems to be taking another regrettable twist with the latest Bordeaux vintage. As well as points and prices, we now have a raft of technical data that is pushing up both of these, in ways that we may not always realise.

Vinouslyspeaking

Published: 18 January, 2007

Recently I re-read a notebook of mine from 1993, when I first tried writing tasting notes. These stuttering notes were laughable: I could barely muster a sentence. While readers may debate the relative merits of my current notes, one thing is clear: the fact that I can now fill the better part of a page with a description of almost any half-decent wine indicates the development of my descriptive language.

Uncorked Don't be wrong metatarsal-ed

Published: 18 January, 2007

All I can hear as I sit and write this are various discussions about what formation England football manager Sven Gran Ericksson should adopt now that he is likely to be without Wayne Rooney, the prodigiously and precociously talented Manchester United forward who broke a metatarsal last weekend.

The Analyst

Published: 18 January, 2007

Neil Beckett takes an in-depth look at the multi-award-winning wine list at The Vineyard at Stockcross, and finds that rare combination of the very best of Old and New World wines.

The unsung heroes

Published: 18 January, 2007

The London International Wine and Spirits Fair can be a trauma for Italian wine lovers. When you see how hidden away the Italian exhibitors are, you feel almost ashamed for the Bel Paese. The stands seem drab and lifeless, and you feel that, just as in the bad old days, their bored inhabitants would have their feet up with a cigarette in their mouth and a newspaper protecting them from importunate customers - if such behaviour were tolerated.

Wheels within wheels

Published: 18 January, 2007

Sunday Times motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson likes South Africa, and not only because it's one of the best driving countries anywhere on earth'. Following his recent trip here to review the Jaguar XK convertible, he waxes truly lyrical: For 30 years I've toured the globe looking for the same light that we saw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Paul Newman takes Katharine Ross for a spin on his new bicycle. You know what I'm talking about: that dandelion-flecked morning promise of warm summer breezes to come. Well it's there, in South Africa.'

Thiols hit the high notes

Published: 18 January, 2007

What a difference 2.2g makes. This is the amount of iBMP, a methoxypyrazine, estimated in the 2005 Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc harvest. Giving the green pepper and herbaceous notes that have helped propel the popularity of the region's flagship varietal, iBMP is just one of the elements being scrutinised in New Zealand's Sauvignon Blanc study, the results of which could herald new styles and Super Sauvignons'.

It's time to celebrate

Published: 18 January, 2007

Two anniversaries are celebrated in the Italian wine world in 2006. Did we say celebrated'? One is the 20th anniversary of the methanol scandal - hardly a pretext for dancing in the streets, since 19 people died from contaminated wine, and several others suffered permanent injury, including blindness.
The other, which ought to be more of a cause for joy, is the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the first DOC wines - as distinct from the passing of the law, which laid down the theory in 1963.

The analyst

Published: 18 January, 2007

When it comes to star formation, we are beginning, thanks to Hubble, to know more about nebulas and protostars than about those of the Michelin variety. But it's clear that the creators of the gastronomic universe have expectations - certainly with regard to the food, and probably with regard to the wine as well. None will have been disappointed by the wine list at Gordon Ramsay.

Wine science

Published: 18 January, 2007

Jamie Goode's Wine Science is an intriguing book, beautifully presented, full of interesting facts, but not easy to assimilate. On taking the first glance, one could be excused for shutting it fairly quickly, since it makes for tough reading, especially in the early chapters on the vine and viticulture. Goode has a PhD
in plant biology, and this is reflected in his writing. This is clearly not a book for the layman, since one has to cope with a string of difficult words and terms, such as mycorrhizae, gravitropism, propagules and morphological plasticity.

Letters: On New Zealand

Published: 18 January, 2007

I read with great interest your excellent supplement on New Zealand; it is always good to have a critical view from abroad. I would, however, like to take issue with Stephen Skelton MW in his article An English MW in New Zealand' (p.14), which lays several claims that are essentially incorrect.