Cracking bottles and eggs
White wine is to a winemaker what the egg, one of the most finicky but essential staples of cooking, is to a chef: a telling gauge of ability and skill. Making white wine is easy but hard to master. Requiring a delicate touch, an exact sense of timing and an almost intuitive feel, many winemakers…
Chardonnay for Christmas
What if you could choose only one wine to go with your traditional Christmas meal: which one would you pick? I’d say let’s hear it for rich, ripe and rounded whites and, as I remind myself each year, Chardonnay is really all you need. Often ignored at Christmas time, Chardonnay can be such an enchanting…
Great whites to fall for
Autumn is making itself felt at the table and in the glass. The fresh produce and ingredients of the season are beckoning; the cooking goes into a higher gear and the cooler evenings bring with them an appetite for hearty, flavoursome wines. On rainy days we might crave uncorking reds but most of the time…
Marrying wine and sweet delights
Now that the nip is still in the air, taste buds crave something intense and there’s nothing quite as comforting as a nice glass of sweet wine with a scrumptious dessert. Finding the right combination isn’t too difficult as long as you follow a few basic directions or, easier still, heed the sommelier’s recommendation when…
Defining vegan-friendly wine
Choosing a bottle of wine is great fun but not easy if you are following a vegan diet that not only excludes all nourishment that is animal-derived but even other food and drink because it has been processed making use of animal substances. The reason that not all wines are vegan-friendly has to do with…