In a warming climate, there is one characteristic in wine that is increasingly coveted: freshness. This is why Ventoux, once a marginal climate for quality wines, finds itself in an increasingly strong position.

Although most of the appellation’s vineyards are at the foot of the mountain, vines are climbing ever upwards, and have now reached 550m above sea level. With Mont Ventoux’s summit at 1,912m, they’ve got plenty of room to grow.

I tasted 56 wines in ascending elevation to see when the freshness of altitude becomes discernible. I was expecting a clear correlation between height and freshness; the reality, however, is more complex.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for top picks from Ventoux

Fresh Ventoux wines

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In between still and spumante wine styles, frizzante used to be a staple of osterie and traditional trattorie in many regions of Italy. In Campania the bubbles softened the searing acidity of Asprinio; in the Oltrè Po they countered the harsh tannins of the Croatina grape; in Emilia they provided the perfect foil to the richness of the cuisine.

Frizzanti were traditionally made by simply bottling early with a little residual sugar and allowing the fermentation to finish in the bottle. Semi-industrial vat re-fermentation threatened to substitute artisan frizzante, but today it is making a robust comeback – ‘Pet-nat’ is trending.

One Italian online retailer lists over 200 ‘hand-made’ frizzanti, including examples from regions without a sparkling wine tradition, such as Sicily, Puglia and Sardinia.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 10 Italian frizzante wines

10 Italian frizzante wines to try:

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Come August in the valley, even as the vines have taken on that beautiful, pregnant-with-fruit look, those of us who live here start to bite our nails. A kind of climate PTSD descends over the collective mood. It’s wildfire season – a term I’d barely ever heard, never mind used, just a decade ago.

I suppose that every wine lover thinks about the weather more than most other people. But having evacuated from my home four times over the last several years, I watch weather very differently now. I am wary. As the growing season unfolds, I can sense the winemakers around me holding their breath.

And 2023 was no exception. It was a year no one will ever forget. But not because of fire or frost or rain, or relentless heat; because 2023 was as perfect as any Napa vintage in living memory. It was Napa’s ‘1961 Bordeaux’.

Silky & captivating

It’s a tricky thing, evaluating a vintage. Even in a tiny 50km-long swath of land like the Napa Valley, there are so many factors that magnify the differential. Elevation alone has a 10-times spread here: some of Napa’s vineyards lie at 60m above sea level, some at about 600m. The rugged mountains, crevices and canyons present on both sides of the valley mean that vineyards face in every possible direction.

Warren Winiarski, the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars (now owned by Italy’s Marchesi Antinori group), once said to me that Napa makes ‘here-I-am wines’ – wines that bounce out in front of you like extroverted teenagers.

But two months after the 2023 harvest, the Cabernets and Merlots I tasted, at just a few weeks old, were nothing like Winiarski’s description. Instead, they were graceful, fresh, deeply flavourful, and so silky that they were absolutely captivating. The Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs were, at the same time, restrained as well as rich. Cathy Corison, who has made 47 vintages of Napa Valley wine, expressed the feelings of many winemakers when she said: ‘After so many challenging years, I am so grateful for the abundant and delicious 2023 vintage.’

The growing season itself proceeded like a slow, steady heartbeat. It was exceptionally long and very cool. Many vineyards were harvested in November, a full two months after they would have normally been picked.

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The season also started cool and late. During the 2022/2023 winter, when the vines were still dormant, northern California had been drenched by more than a dozen atmospheric rivers that dropped huge amounts of rain, replenishing underground aquifers, but also keeping the ground wet and cool.

As the summer rolled on, we all braced for late-summer heat spikes. None came. August melded into September and still the gentle weather continued. ‘By 15 September, we were all in a state of fear,’ said Lee Hudson, owner with his wife Cristina of Hudson Vineyards in Carneros. ‘What if it rained? What if a wildfire started?’ But the clear skies and the cool sun continued. No heat domes, no wildfires, no rain.

September became October, and the grapes continued their magical slow ripening. The tannins matured gently; layer after layer of flavours were laid down; sugars progressed evenly.

By the time that picking began in the vineyards, the valley’s winemakers were ecstatic. ‘The Cabernets are so complex, so precise and so focused,’ said Matt Crafton, winemaker at Chateau Montelena. ‘The energy, freshness and tension in the wines is extraordinary. Even at just a few weeks old, they’ve gone beyond mere fruitiness; they are sophisticated.’

Matt Crafton, Chateau Montelena. Credit: Chateau Montelena

Magnificent value

The ‘beyond fruitiness’ allowed for other flavours to show themselves, too, among them savoury and floral notes. In a hot vintage, these can be baked out of a Cabernet or obscured by alcohol. But in my tastings, many of the 2023 wines showed lavender and violet notes, as well as a wild, Californian, foresty character – a heady aroma of chaparral with bay, fir and madrone trees.

‘One of the things I look for is energy in Cabernet grapes,’ said Meghan Zobeck, winemaker at Burgess Cellars. ‘Energy makes a Cabernet that’s lively and ready to drink now, but also one that will age for decades.’

For me, the 2023 Cabernets have something more, too – they have beauty. They are rich without being heavy. Freshness hums through the fruit, giving the wines an exceptional sense of aliveness. They possess an electrically vivid blue-red colour. And even young, they have long, long finishes.

Like every Napa winemaker I’ve talked to about the 2023s, I have never witnessed so magnificent a vintage in the Napa Valley. In 2023, ‘here-I-am’ became ‘here’s once-in-a-century’.

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These line-ups give me insight into place, time and weather, and prompt questions. How has a specific vintage evolved over the years? What behind-the-scenes dramas of frost, hailstorms or heatwaves have found their way into tastes and aromas? I treasure surprises, such as a wine from a scorching, heatwave vintage that is still fresh after a decade, and what that tells me about the site it comes from.

What ties the bottles together is the vineyard. An analytical deep dive into 10 or 20 vintages to discover the stamp of terroir reminds me of listening to an opera singer’s performances from young dazzle to a voice beginning to fade away, yet with poignant layers of complexity.

Happily, châteaux in Bordeaux, where great wines can age for a century, are fond of staging such events to show off their liquid history. During Bordeaux’s en primeur week in April 2023, I attended three brilliant verticals, at Château Haut-Bailly (grand cru classé de Graves), Clos Fourtet (St-Emilion 1er grand cru classé B), and Château Ducru-Beaucaillou (St-Julien 2ème cru classé), each followed by a fabulous meal. All charted individual journeys across time, and made clear that focus, commitment, dreams and
ambition are as important to upping quality as plenty of money – and in the 21st century, these can mitigate bad weather.

Clos Fourtet’s 2020 vintage, the final wine in a 20-year vertical tasting held last year. Credit: Marie-Amelie Journel

Graves elegance

Château Haut Bailly’s 25-year, 1998-2022 event, held in a quiet stone-walled cellar room and the château’s elegant dining room, highlighted the decades after American banker Robert Wilmers purchased the Pessac-Léognan estate. He and general manager Véronique Sanders immediately embraced an haute couture approach to viticulture. During the tasting, I could see the effects in the precision and refinement of the 2004 vintage, with another step up with the 2008, and a third in 2016. Since Wilmers’ death in 2017, his son Chris has continued his legacy.

What stood out most was the consistency of quality and style, especially in off-vintages such as 2011, with its cold, wet summer. The hallmarks in all were elegance, subtlety and balance, with a continuing upward curve of purity and precision. Recent vintages are larger in scale, with a suave opulence, but the essential personality continues to show through.

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St-Emilion freshness

Clos Fourtet’s 20-year vertical, 2001-2020, showed off the journey of the Cuvelier family at this St-Emilion 1GCC property since they purchased it in 2001. I could taste and smell the gradual shift towards less oak influence – down from 18 months in 80% new barrels for the 2001 vintage to 40% in barrel samples of 2022.

Rather than a simple older-to-younger line-up, wine flights were divided by style. In comparing those from lighter years together, then a group from sunny vintages, such as 2003, I was surprised to detect in all of them the freshness that comes from vines growing on the limestone plateau. Among the Les Iconiques set, a shining, deep 2001 stood out, while in Les Exceptionnels, great vintages 2005, ’10, ’16, ’18, ’19 and ’20 wowed with the kind of succulent fruit evident in the 1998 and 1989 with dinner. It was clear that the château never embraced the supercharged, opulent style favoured by (now-retired) critic Robert Parker as so many St-Emilion estates did.

Medoc seduction

I could hear church bells ringing in the distance at the beginning of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou’s 20-year vertical – from 2003, when current owner Bruno Borie took over managing his family’s property, to 2022. Older vintages poured at an extravagant four-hour lunch, such as the 64-year-old cedar-scented 1959, were serious evidence of the wines’ longevity.

Borie, too, divided wines into groups, with names such as Challenges (such as 2013), Greats (2010), Underestimated (2017), Classics (2016), Excellence: a New Era (since 2018). They were nods to other dimensions to consider during a vertical tasting. Was 2017 really underestimated? At Ducru, yes.

With the 2004 vintage, Borie began changing viticulture and winemaking, lowering yields, fine-tuning the vineyard, and investing in a new cellar. The gradual effects show up in the subsequent vintages, especially with silkier, softer tannins. And especially from 2016, the wines seem more seductive, plush and rich.

Time travel

There’s another aspect to vertical tastings that tantalises me: they carry us into the past. With Saint-Marcellin cheese at the Ducru lunch, we sipped a still intensely flavoured 1923 and a delicate, fading 1920, the year of the estate’s 200th anniversary. I savoured the latter while recalling that this was the year America gave women the right to vote.

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I make a distinction, naturally, between restaurant and merchants’ lists. There are restaurants that should warn you when you book that you’ll need an hour or two to pick from the 200 Burgundies and 400 Bordeaux, not to mention the head sommelier’s deep dive into Alsace, the Jura and the parts of Italy, Spain and South America where he apparently spends his holidays. These are website lists, to be tackled over the weekend before you go. I’m afraid if I’m desperate to drink the 2012 Corton-Charlemagne from Coche-Dury, I’ll go online to Wine-Searcher and save myself a three-figure mark up. Maybe even four-figure.

But does great food, a chef’s pride and joy, enhance great wine – or vice versa? One of the two will inevitably lose out. A Hermès tie calls for a plain shirt. Have you seen the delectable movie released in February this year, The Taste of Things? The title doesn’t survive translation, and the original French one (Le Pot-au-Feu) is scarcely better.

We don’t discover what exactly the wine is that Juliette Binoche’s character and her employer/lover Dodin choose for the transcendent pot au feu (the classic French dish of meat and vegetables cooked slowly in a casserole) that is her life’s work; a pale red – maybe Burgundy – but served in such dreadful little glasses that it would hardly matter. I suspect the camera operator said ‘I can’t see the colour, put some water in it’. That’s what happened to me on location time and again.

A pot au feu? The exhaustive list of matching suggestions in my Pocket Wine Book (2024 editi0n, £14.99 Octopus) proposes a rustic red. I’m not so sure now, though. After all the trouble (a whole film’s worth) Juliette has taken, we need a clear choice. How do you choose? Is it the textbook choice, the sommelier’s selection, or the haphazard what’s-next in your wine-rack?

After half a century of decisions (I was once Secretary of The International Wine & Food Society) I have faith in Serendipity. She’s not only a pretty name; she widens your horizons. Can that be a bad thing?

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Every year, Michel Chapoutier launches his Rhône single-vineyard wines way before his neighbours, and bang in the middle of the Bordeaux en primeur campaign to boot. You have to admire his chutzpah. Chapoutier never was a shrinking violet, and his wines are just as bold.

I’ll be visiting the Rhône in October this year to taste the 2023 vintage in more detail, working my way through every appellation, both north and south. In the meantime, this tasting always acts as a tantalising scent on the wind, a whisper of what’s to come.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the 2023 Sélections Parcellaires

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The grape vine is well adapted to dry climates. It has, though, its limits. These are site-dependent and depend on evapotranspiration rates, but in warm climates vines will struggle on less than 450mm a year. Around most of the wine-growing rim of the western Mediterranean (Spain, France, Italy, North Africa), the European Drought Observatory is recording soil-moisture deficits. In western Languedoc and Roussillon in southern France, and in northern Spain’s Catalunya, drought is reaching catastrophic levels. Reports from major producers show rainfall in these areas was often below 400mm in 2021 and 2022, and below 300mm in 2023. Plants die of thirst slowly: pine trees brown, in blotches; the landscape drains to grey. Even spring this year has struggled to find its flush of emerald.

‘Vines are dying,’ wrote an observing Justin Howard-Sneyd MW from his Domaine of the Bee vineyards in Roussillon in a 23 February 2024 email circular ominously titled ‘Sorry to be the bearer of sad news…’. ‘Roussillon is in crisis,’ confirms leading producer Jean-Marc Lafage, with more than 300ha in six different zones of French Catalonia. ‘Many vineyards in the area are already marginal, and this is pushing them over the edge. We’ve only had 300mm of rain in the last 18 months; winter was completely dry. We’ve never pruned the vineyard so fast – because there’s so little wood to prune.’

The situation in Catalunya is no better. As widely reported, Barcelona declared a drought emergency on 1 February 2024, as its reservoirs fell to just 16% of capacity. Spain as a whole is missing half its normal water reserves, and the Spanish drought is now among the world’s 10 most costly active climate disasters (per capita, according to a December 2023 report by Christian Aid). Pepe Raventós of Raventós i Blanc called 2023 ‘the harvest of suffering’. The weather station on his property recorded just 326mm of rain during the 2021 seasonal cycle, 366mm during 2022 and 287mm during the 2023 cycle. Since then, says Pepe, ‘only a couple of drizzles’. All of nature feels this. Production of Parellada and Macabeu fell by about 60% in 2023, though Xarel·lo copes better. At Can Sumoi, the Raventós farm in the hills, the roe deer were so thirsty they ate 90% of the vine shoots in April 2023. Miguel Torres wrote to me in August 2023 to point out that the three-year drought was seeing crop levels fall by up to 70% in parts of Penedès and Priorat.

Everyone is responding, of course, and notably with strategies which can broadly be grouped under the ‘regenerative viticulture’ banner. By the end of this year, Jean-Marc Lafage will be re-using all his winery water: a significant 18 million litres a year. He’s also doubled soil water-retention by using biochar, and achieved further benefits with low-density cover crops, minimum-strategy irrigation and contour plantings.

Torres, too, is working on similar schemes: changes to row orientations, increasing soil organic matter (a 1% increase helps keep an extra 240,000 litres of water per hectare in the soil), using pine mulch and changing rootstocks. ‘But you don’t get immediate results,’ says Miguel’s sister Mireia Torres, ‘so it isn’t helping us much with the immediate crisis.’

Another problem is the tussle between different agricultural sectors for existing supplies of irrigation water. Peach and apricot trees, for example, generally need more water than vines. Whose livelihood matters most?

Yes, an end to this drought will eventually come, just as it did with Australia’s 2001-2009 and 2017-2019 droughts, and California’s 2011-2017 and 2020-2022 droughts. (As I write in late February, folk are kayaking in Death Valley.) Europe is warming at twice the rate of other continents, though (WMO ‘State of the Climate in Europe 2022’, June 2023). It’s the drought-prone, land-encircled Mediterranean – with its proximity to the hyper-arid regions of North Africa – that will bear the brunt of this. Southern European wine-growers must adapt if they’re to survive.

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It is legitimate to hesitate before writing natural wine without inverted commas, given the difficulty in defining what might actually constitute natural wine. Despite the grey areas, and leaving aside the semantics of ‘natural’, there’s a general understanding that a natural wine will be made from organic grapes, with few or no additives or manipulation, probably with spontaneous fermentation and without fining or filtering.

This approach to vinification can take wines outside many peoples’ comfort zones, with the risk of excess volatile acidity, brettanomyces, and oxidation – but also a whole raft of other unfamiliar and frankly unpleasant aromas which incur the wrath and indignation of journalists who, in no uncertain terms, have largely branded natural wine as undrinkable in the past.

Scroll down to see notes and scores for 10 (non-stinky) Italian natural wines

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An awful lot of wine is made under the generic Côtes du Rhône appellation. Around 167 million bottles in 2022, to be precise. And while much of this is pretty average, a small proportion transcends the appellation. The greatest of all is Château de Fonsalette.

It’s one of the three estates owned by Emmanuel Reynaud. The most famous of the three is Château Rayas in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. And although Fonsalette is not as well known, the wines are still extremely desirable. Hedonism Wines in London currently sells the 2009 at £580 per bottle.

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22 wines to try

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Lydia is a reliable source and an authoritative and respected figure worldwide, who has been a consultant for Zanella for 10 years.

Her statement, perhaps taken for granted by some experts, struck me and resounded in my ears for days, prompting me to delve deeper. There are no doubts about the truth of the first part of what she said: the best Italian agronomists agree with the highly regarded French consultant. ‘The abundance of magnesium is a consequence of young soils in Italy,’ said Maurizio Castelli, among the most esteemed winemakers of great Italian Sangiovese (involved with Mastrojanni, Bibbiano, Col d’Orcia and many more).

Naturally, there are vineyards, ‘menzioni’ or crus more or less influenced by this nutrient. ‘In Sorì Tildìn, the bronze colour in the soil is magnesium,’ explained Gaia Gaja during the tasting of the new vintages of Barbaresco early this year. In neighbouring Barolo, one of the MGAs most influenced by this mineral is Brunate. ‘To our mind, it comes from Monviso,’ said Carlotta Rinaldi of producer Giuseppe Rinaldi, referring to the highest peak in the Cottian Alps range, to the west of Piedmont.

Accepting that there can be a high presence of magnesium in some vineyards, then the question becomes: how much ‘bitterness’ due to this nutrient is to be found in Italian wines compared to tasting French, Spanish or New World wines? The bitterness in question goes beyond a defect: grapes that are not perfectly ripe – the result of a cold vintage or harvested too early – end up producing a herbaceous taste or green tannins, both leaning towards an unappealing bitterness that will not evolve or improve.

But the bitterness we are talking about is different; it’s a delicately bitter taste. Master of Wine Jérémy Cukierman, in his book Vignerons Essentiels (Martinière BL, 2019), refers to this bittersweet taste, emphasising how, in the right measure, it can become an element of greater complexity and dimension, adding a new layer of taste to a wine.

In the aforementioned Sorì Tildìn wine by Gaja, for example, it takes on a nuance between savoury and rocky; in the wines of Brunate, it assumes a dark tone in the finish, similar in its savoury, mineral character to Sorì Tildìn. The great wines of Brunello di Montalcino or Barolo, consumed after long bottle ageing, tend to resemble each other in wonderfully bittering notes of rhubarb root or rhubarb candy.

This year, Biondi-Santi releases another one of the historic wines from the Tenuta Greppo in Montalcino. The 1988 Riserva is a masterpiece, the perfect wine to explain the myth of Brunello – amid the sweetness of red cherry and dried black plum emerges a deep bitter note of rhubarb that contributes, along with acidity and fragrance of tannin, to a beautiful palate tension. Federico Radi, Biondi-Santi’s viticulture and winemaking director, explains that in the Greppo vineyards, ‘magnesium is double the level of potassium’ – so much so that they have to work to make up for the deficiencies of the latter.

There are deep historical reasons that connect Italians to the bitter taste in wine. According to the gastronomic historian Massimo Montanari, the preference for bitterness was due to the abundance of wild herbs on the peninsula. Their widespread presence was so common that it was shared indiscriminately by both nobility and the common people, unlike most other foods.

The use of these herbs and spices led to the creation of wines such as vermouth or Barolo chinato. It was long believed that they had healing properties and, despite no modern scientific evidence, they have remained a tradition, and the bittersweet taste deeply rooted in the unique identity of Italian wine. To paraphrase the famous quip by Madonna during one of her concerts in Italy, ‘Italians do it bitter’!

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‘I worry about the younger generation,’ Gallica owner and winemaker Rosemary Cakebread said to me a few hours later. ‘It’s difficult for young people here in Napa even to buy a home, let alone a vineyard.

‘If you have any instinct to be a solo proprietor, you’ll need family money or people who believe in you. But without the younger generation we’ll lose farming as it exists here.’ She’s right. When the hedge-fund and tech billionaires buy up the last vineyard, Napa becomes a luxury-goods factory. That’s why those baby vines planted at the end of the ridge matter.

Napa reds are disarmingly beautiful. They take all the scrutiny that you can throw at them; they age winningly; yet – uniquely in the fine-wine pantheon – their appeal is universal, easy of access, unforbidding. Given local wealth (Silicon Valley lies down the road), land values have soared – up to $700,000 per acre for prime planted land in 2023 (equivalent to €1.6m a hectare: just a little more than Margaux, a little less than St-Julien, according to Vineyards Bordeaux’s August 2023 report).

‘Napa has made some of the greatest wines in the world,’ said Julia van der Vink, the viticulturist who has planted those vines at the end of the ridge with her partner, winemaker Rob Black, ‘but the culture that surrounds those wines is eroding. We came at it with nothing. Everyone told us it was impossible. But if you’re defeatist, then the next generation doesn’t get a shot. It doesn’t make sense to me that the next generation should leave. We wanted to hold down a fort here. My dream is that we’re shoulder-to-shoulder with others in 10 years.’

That sky vineyard is called Aerika. It was created with the help of 18 angel investors, six of whom are UK-based – and all of whom were prepared to support the idea of an owner- operated vineyard (Julia and Rob, under these arrangements, can keep majority ownership). Julia’s brother Nick has a financial background, which has helped with stitching the intricate acquisition together. The land (50 acres or just over 20ha, of which 20 acres/8.1ha will be planted) has pedigree. It was once part of Al Baxter’s Veedercrest Vineyards – and the 1972 Veedercrest Chardonnay was one of the wines in the landmark 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting event organised by the late Steven Spurrier.

If anyone can ‘turn the great hierarchy of agriculture over’ here, it should be Julia and Rob. She’s a Harvard graduate who, after working with Australia’s Mac Forbes and Mullineux in South Africa among others, has just finished eight years as vineyard manager at Harlan in Napa. He’s a widely travelled New Zealander who has worked in Spain, Oregon and Burgundy (with Comte Senard and François Labet of Château de la Tour); he made wine at Screaming Eagle between 2014 and 2023. There are no Aerika bottles yet, but I tasted barrel samples of its glitteringly vibrant Mount Veeder Cabernet from Wildwoods, a vineyard lying just a few miles to the north; and a perfumed Cabernet blend from nearby Wing Canyon Vineyard. I’m confident Aerika wines will be gorgeous.

This ‘money problem’ isn’t confined to Napa. Despite what are called SAFERs in France (official organisations with the power to intervene in agricultural and rural property transactions, partly with the aim of helping younger farmers and growers get a foothold), spiralling land values in Burgundy and the best parts of Bordeaux also exclude young newcomers not born to land ownership. Will Julia and Rob’s ‘little pirate ship’ succeed? Fingers crossed. And that their Jolly Roger inspires others, too.

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Languedoc-Roussillon: two words, three syllables each. You’d be forgiven for assuming some kind of parity. But Roussillon makes only about 5% as much wine as Languedoc.

Take a walk around Perpignan, just 10km from the Mediterranean and 20km from the Spanish border, and you’ll sooner spot the blood-and-gold stripes of the Senyera than the French tricolour. Street signs offer both Catalan and French names. Many locals believe Roussillon is more naturally grouped with Penedès and Priorat than Pic-St-Loup and Picpoul de Pinet.

Ask wine lovers to name the greatest estate in Languedoc and Mas de Daumas Gassac will undoubtedly feature. But what about Roussillon? Not so obvious, but there’s one producer that I would suggest without hesitation – Domaine Danjou-Banessy.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 10 Domaine Danjou-Banessy wines

10 fabulous wines from Domaine Danjou-Banessy:

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As I drove into a small hamlet just north of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, I wondered which building was Château Mont-Redon. It quickly became clear that the hamlet was Château Mont-Redon.

The average Châteauneuf estate has 10 hectares of vines and a small, functional winery. Mont-Redon has its own petrol station and full-time mechanic to service its fleet of tractors. It’s big enough to have a library of older vintages going back decades. I paid a visit to find out if its reputation for exceptionally long-lived wines is merited.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 28 wines tasted across six decades

Tasting notes and score for 28 wines tasted across six decades:

Wines are ranked from youngest to oldest

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Looking for inspiration? Here are the best things to read, watch and listen to for wine lovers. We’ve picked out some of the top wine-related books, TV shows, podcasts and more for your enjoyment!

Read

Climbing the Vines in Burgundy

by Alex Gambal

Subtitled How an American came to own a legendary vineyard in France, this memoir tells the tale of Gambal’s journey from Washington DC to Burgundy. It reveals how he managed to acquire some of the most coveted vineyard land in the region (the first non-Frenchman to own Montrachet grand cru vines) and set up a boutique winery that he went on to sell to Burgundy’s Boisset family in 2019.

Oz Clarke’s Story of Wine

This updated version of Oz’s 2015 book The History of Wine in 100 Bottles charts the history of wine and winemaking through 100 specific, significant bottles. New chapters cover phenomena that have had a significant impact over the last decade: climate change (and how it has transformed grape-growing in the UK), orange wines, natural wines, alternative packaging and wildfires.

Wine Witch on Fire

Or to give it its full title, Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation and Drinking Too Much. It’s an honest memoir, written by award-winning US wine writer Natalie MacLean, charting how she overcame struggles in her life, personal and professional. She gives an insight into what it’s like to work as a woman in the male-dominated wine industry, and recommends some of her favourite wines along the way. It’s honest, raw and inspirational.

The World in a Wineglass

Written in US wine editor Ray Isle’s usual engaging style, this guide sets out to help readers choose more delicious, interesting and environmentally friendly wines that won’t
break the bank. After outlining how organic / biodynamic/ sustainable/ regenerative wines are made, and why it matters, Isle introduces his favourite independent wineries around the world who ‘work in ways that benefit the planet, rather than screw it up’.

Watch

The Most Expensive Wine in the World

The wines of Bordeaux’s Liber Pater can command prices of US$30,000 a bottle. This documentary shines a light on Loïc Pasquet, the man behind the label, who spent time in prison for failing to comply with Bordeaux’s agricultural laws and practices, giving a rare insight into why he feels so strongly about doing things his own way. (Apple TV, £8.99 or Winemasters.tv, $7.99 to rent for one week)

Street Somm

Streaming in the US on the Tastemade channel, and produced in partnership with Constellation Brands, Street Somm features hip-hop entrepreneur and self-taught wine
expert Jermaine Stone, as he explores six culinary hubs across the US – from New York to San Francisco – with numerous stops in between. Each episode sees Stone pair up
with a different food expert, and highlights signature dishes, unexpected wine pairings and the stories behind both.

The Mega Trade

Wine educator Sam Povey set himself a challenge this summer: to trade his way, with his followers on social media, from a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz all the way up to a bottle
of one of the world’s most expensive wines, Domaine de la Romanée Conti’s Romanée Conti. It’s all taking place on his entertaining and informative @sampovey.wine Instagram page. As Decanter‘s November issue went to press, he had worked his way up to Domaine Coffinet-Duvernay, Bâtard-Montrachet GC 2018.

Stefan Neumann’s Blind Tasting Course

Hosted by Master Sommelier Stefan Neumann, this online video course is aimed at anyone sitting wine exams that involve blind tasting, but will be useful to any wine lover looking to hone their skills. Fifty bite-sized videos lasting three hours in total are divided into nine modules, covering not only how to identify grape variety, region and vintage blind, but also how to sharpen your senses, build a taste profile and expand your vocabulary.

Listen

The Four Top Podcast

Oregon-based wine writer and journalist Katherine Cole is executive producer and host of this James Beard Award-winning podcast, which sees weekly episodes distil down wine-related news stories of the moment in a chatty and instructive way. It’s a mix of more serious and lighter stories, and the bite-sized length of the episodes (typically 20 minutes) make them ideal for staying informed on the move, or during coffee breaks.

Spanish Wine Experience

Produced by the owners of Madrid wine shop and tasting space Madrid & Darracott, this podcast devoted entirely to Spanish wine has a back catalogue of about 180 episodes, and Series 3 has just started. Find deep dives into popular regions and styles such as Rioja and Cava, plus plenty for those looking to discover Spanish wine’s more obscure side – anyone for a glass of Tostado do Ribeiro? Listen on Apple Podcasts

Alcohol, wine and health podcasts

Search for ‘Professor David Nutt’ wherever you look for your podcasts, and you’ll find many individual episodes of different series featuring the neuropsychopharmacologist and former UK Government advisor. He details the science of alcohol consumption in a fascinating way. Meanwhile, over at Wine Blast (S4, E13) Susie Barrie MW and Peter Richards MW talk to Professor Tim Spector about wine and the microbiome, highlighting how red wine drunk in moderation can boost gut health.

Looking Into Wine

What’s it like being the editor of Decanter magazine? Find out in a special 30-minute ‘Careers in Wine’ episode of Italian sommelier Mattia Scarpazza’s Looking Into Wine podcast. The interview with Amy Wislocki, who has been at the helm of the magazine for 23 years, touches on topics such as how Decanter has changed during that time, how to succeed as a wine writer, and how the magazine coped during the pandemic.

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The post Decanter Bookmarks: Things to read, watch and listen to for wine lovers appeared first on Decanter.

This profoundly maritime region fronting the capricious Bay of Biscay rarely managed to stump up more than three outstanding vintages per decade in the past, yet of the eight vintages between 2015 and 2022, only 2017 and 2021 fall short of excellence (and 2017 Pomerol and Sauternes are delicious).

The 2023 vintage is being assessed at present; still more surprising success seems possible. Those caring for vineyards will always face challenges, but global warming appears to have lurched Bordeaux forward into a changed state. Its most noteworthy feature? Reliably hot summers.

According to local Météo-France annual reports, June, July and August in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and now 2023 have all been hotter than the moving 30-year summer averages. Only modestly so for 2016, but flamboyantly so for 2018 and 2022. Most of the seasonal challenges have tended to come in the first half of the year – notably downy-mildew pressure from the very wet spring weather of 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2023.

That pattern of wet early months, though, set the vineyards up to cope with summer heat admirably – and when spring rain didn’t show, timely summer storms saw the vines through. Drought cursed none of these vintages, though it threatened in 2022.

Among Bordeaux’s top châteaux, huge changes have been instituted in both vineyards and cellars. The use of cover crops and heat-adapted canopies have changed the short-term look of vineyards; new rootstocks and row orientations, a switch to massal selections (propagating from an estate’s best-quality existing vine stock) for replanting, and experiments with agro-forestry mark a slower but no less significant shift.

Harvesting is swift and targeted; fruit sorting futuristically finicky; gravity systems render pumps redundant; extraction is gossamer; there’s less new oak being used and more alternative storage vessels. The fine anatomisation of vineyards and the switch to small-lot vinification provides super-granular blending possibilities: the biggest change of all.

Is there a ‘but’? Well, the taste of ambitious Bordeaux has significantly changed over the last decade. The sunny, easygoing opulence which linked 1982, 1989, 1990, 2000 and 2009 is now in abeyance. There’s a new severity and cut to ambitious young Bordeaux, linked to the acidity, freshness and ‘precision’ sought by cellarmasters and lauded by wine critics. Anatomise these wines, though, and you can hardly fail to be impressed by their concentration, their layered intricacy, their focus, their drama.

Where are the wines going? How will they age? Which are the best vintages? At this stage, no one seems too sure. Classical European palates vaunt 2016 and 2019; Bordeaux itself seems convinced that 2022 is The One; baroque 2018 has excitements galore; 2020 is a dark horse but outstanding at some properties. Lavish point scores fall like firework embers about the wines, ‘perfection’ included. Wine regions with three reliably hot summer months, of course, are common enough elsewhere, yet no one is yet suggesting that there’s a new monotony to Bordeaux’s tipping-point surge.

Prices for top wines are a sour point. They succeeded in hobbling 2022 en primeur sales; indeed no campaign since 2010 has been a roaring success, which seems odd. Is this mass of great wine struggling to find a loving home? If, like me, you buy at £35 or less per bottle, you’ll find unrivalled value among ambitious underlings. The cream of mid-priced Bordeaux from these vintages might offer the best red-wine value in the world.

Perhaps I’m missing the old gentleness of a generous Bordeaux vintage, its warm smile, its friendly embrace – but Bordeaux’s genes haven’t changed. These great sites have always delivered beauty and ease in time; why should they stop now? Climate change, meanwhile, is real; as yet it’s unchecked; such bounty cannot last. Seize the day.

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Katherine Cole is the author of five books on wine, as well as host and executive producer of James Beard Award-winning podcast The Four Top.

Katherine Cole profile picture credit: She Saw Things

But lost in all the hand-wringing is an important fact: a glass a night may, in fact, lengthen our lifespans. Yes, we are all doomed to die. But wine won’t do us in.

Hundreds of studies show that moderate tipplers enjoy health benefits – a 10-30% reduced risk of heart attack, stroke and peripheral vascular disease – over abstainers and heavy drinkers.

‘These studies are solid, and data overwhelmingly shows that there is a potential cardiovascular benefit from drinking alcohol in moderation,’ says Laura Catena MD. A graduate of Harvard, and Stanford Medical School, Catena was an emergency room physician in San Francisco for 25 years before taking the helm at her family’s wine business, Bodega Catena Zapata, in Argentina. She has been campaigning tirelessly in defence of wine and poking holes in the WHO’s claims.

In a guide issued to journalists last spring, the WHO aimed to discount decades of perfectly good research by alleging sponsorship bias. News coverage dutifully regurgitated this assertion, but Catena disputes it, adding that just 5.4% of 386 widely cited observational studies on alcohol and health were funded by the alcohol industry.

In addition, the WHO’s scare campaign fails to mention the top two global causes of death, heart disease and stroke, focusing instead on cancer.

But just 4% of cancers are attributed to alcohol. By contrast, as Catena points out, there’s a far greater likelihood that diet (30-35%), tobacco (25-30%), an infection (15-20%), or obesity (10-20%) was the culprit. So if you want to quit something, why not start with charcuterie and cigarettes?

‘Of the big international studies, I’m not aware of any that don’t identify the healthiest populations as the alcohol drinkers,’ observes Miles Hassell MD, a physician specialising in comprehensive risk reduction. Hassell’s popular book Good Food, Great Medicine: A Mediterranean Diet and Lifestyle Guide has been in print for nearly two decades.

‘Half the patients I see are over 75,’ says Hassell. ‘The eldest are active, not too heavy, don’t smoke, regularly drink a small amount of alcohol, and cook at home.’ The way he reads the data, older adults who drink modestly – even after heart attacks or cancer – live longer than lifetime abstainers.

And the ‘French paradox’ – the observation that red wine drinkers, in particular, outlive those who live and eat similarly but drink differently – continues to hold true, he adds. Red wine, taken in moderation, is good for our hearts and guts.

Meanwhile, the WHO’s warning siren has silenced other doctors. A well-known hepatologist I contacted for this article declined to speak to me, then immediately posted a report from JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) on his social media feed. The JAMA article suggests that alcohol-related cancers disproportionately affect the poor, while those of higher socio- economic status enjoy the protective benefits of moderate consumption. Put another way, too much cheap booze is killing the less fortunate.

‘To say it that alcohol is purely a toxin is an incomplete story,’ says my friend and colleague Martín Reyes MW. A wine importer, Reyes is part of an anti-abolitionist movement within the wine industry. ‘It is either a toxin or a tonic, and it depends entirely on the dose and the pace.’

When ordered to cut out alcohol, people seek pleasure elsewhere. Marijuana use is up. The ‘sober’ are replacing alcohol with unregulated psychoactive substances. Bourgeois women are microdosing on magic mushrooms. Contrary to all reason, these substances are assumed to be safe because very little is known about them.

As the world faces an epidemic of loneliness, why not, instead, enjoy a beverage that for some 10,000 years has created camaraderie, and eased everything from stress to arthritis? Wine heals – as long as we enjoy it in moderation, drink it with food, and focus on quality and enjoyment rather than quantity and oblivion.

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The small Suzuki 4×4 came to an abrupt stop and we teetered at the top of a steep path in lieu-dit ‘Les Rochains’, high in the hills of Côte-Rôtie. It had been raining all day and the ground was a slick of slippery brown mud. The Rhône was flowing grey in the valley far below us. Léa Bonnefond flicked a button on the dashboard and the car switched to four-wheel drive. She pushed the accelerator, and down we went.

The cover of my notebook still displays my fingernail marks, but Bonnefond was unconcerned – just another day in the vines for this 26-year-old, who grew up next to the winery in the tiny hamlet of Mornas.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for five vintages of Léa Bonnefond’s stunning wine

Notes and scores for five vintages of Léa Bonnefond’s exceptional cuvée:

Wines are listed youngest to oldest

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When I saw the first upside-down village sign, I put it down to some bored, teenage prankster. But as I drove through one village after another on my way to Séguret, every village sign had been inverted. It transpired that this was a sign of solidarity for local farmers who feel under attack.

Their protests have since made headline news around the world, as agricultural workers have blocked roads and dumped manure in front of municipal buildings across France. There are many tangled grievances: burdensome paperwork, painful taxation, increasing energy bills, rising prices of other goods, and competition from cheap imported food and drink.

Inverted village sign in the village of Séguret. Credit: Mathilde Suter, Domaine de l’Amandine.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 22 Côtes du Rhône Villages Séguret wines to try

22 fantastic Côtes du Rhône Villages Séguret wines to try

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Well? Are you going to do it? Put like that, maybe not. Yet all I’ve done is to welcome you to my kitchen table, and poured you a £8,905 serve (7.5cl) of the 2008 Domaine Leroy Musigny. I told you the truth – but was insufficiently precise. You were wary. Rightly so, since my description might also have described a poison.

You sniff and sip the Burgundy, now decanted into hand-blown crystal; doubtless it’s wonderful (I’ve never tried). What a relief! Biodynamically grown, artisanally crafted – and free of chemicals, of course.

Not so. As I said, it’s a complex mixture of chemical compounds. Water, ethanol, glycerol, acids, polyphenols, polysaccharides: all these are chemical compounds or families of compounds. Chemistry is all around us. It’s the study of matter, its properties and its interactions. Organic chemistry anatomises life itself. Yet this vast subject and its necessarily complex nomenclature terrify – so we run.

We ‘don’t want chemicals in our wine’, even though wine itself is a mixture of chemical compounds. We need and trust salt, and season our food to excess – yet ‘sodium chloride’ rings alarm bells. We rhapsodise the acidity in a fine Mosel Riesling, but frown at E334 in desserts, jams, jellies and sweets. (It’s tartaric acid, the most distinctive and significant acid in wine.) Carbon dioxide (or an atmospheric excess of it) has come to be seen as toxic – unless it’s beading Champagne, Coke or Perrier, or creeping across the stage as dry ice (all 250kg of it) in Phantom of the Opera. No one wants stinking June vineyards laden in copper sulphate. Thank goodness, though, for traditional Bordeaux mixture, which helps organic wine-growers keep fungal diseases at bay. (Bordeaux mixture is copper sulphate mixed with quicklime.) Harmful sulphur dioxide should be kept out of wine if possible, no? A handful of dried apricots, by contrast, makes a healthy, antioxidant-packed snack. Eight dried apricots may carry up to twice the SO2 of an average bottle of red wine; sulphur dioxide, moreover, is a natural by-product of fermentation.

‘I don’t mind nature’s chemistry,’ you reply; ‘I just want the chemistry to stop there. I’m going to drink wine, to take it into my body, so I want it to be pure and natural.’ Never been ill, then? Most of the drugs that keep our bodies healthy are synthetic chemical substances. One day, synthetic chemicals in your body are going to save or prolong your life.

The problem is not chemistry, but its misuse. As wine consumers, we would be best placed to assess this misuse by engaging with the subject rationally rather than hysterically.

It may be that (resources allowing) biodynamics is the best way to nurture a high-quality vineyard. If so, there will be sound biochemical reasons for that. Resorting to picturesque explanations sets our thinking back, unless these are expressly couched as poetry (a beautiful truth beyond reason).

The addition of chemical compounds (SO2, say) to a complex mixture of chemical compounds (like wine) strikes me as a neutral act. If they disfigure wine, as misguided additions do, they constitute misuse. If they permit wine’s finest sensual qualities to emerge with maximum clarity, or extend wine’s life (which nature intends to be short and sour), they are used well. The difference is best called calmly, using our noses, mouths and digestive systems.

The most lethal chemical compound in wine is ethanol – but it’s that which, for at least 9,000 years, humans have craved. Ethanol illuminates wines from within, brings drinkers together, ensures that wines like Musigny (whose singular beauty must certainly possess a biochemical profile) inspire. Embracing ‘the central science’ – the link between the physical world and living things – is essential to understanding. Chemistry deserves a better wine rap.

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When choosing a wine, consulting tasting notes can offer some valuable insight. We can all be guilty of just scanning for scores, but when picking a wine to drink now, there’s a more important number to look at – the ‘drink from’ date.

A question of pleasure

When I visited Jean-Louis Chave last October I was lucky enough to taste something very special: his 2020 Cuvée Cathelin. It’s a Hermitage bottling he makes only in the best years. I also tasted a mature vintage of his classic Hermitage, the 2001, a less vaunted year.

Which was better? No question – the 2020 Cuvée Cathelin. Which would I like to drink? That’s easy – the 2001 classic Hermitage.

Scroll down to see notes and scores (and drinking windows) for 10 wines that are ready to drink now

Ten top wines ready to drink now:

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