A short while ago, Blogger, the medium by which that blog is currently published, announced that they’d no longer be supporting publishing by ftp. For the non-technical, let me explain. Currently, I use blogger to compose and organize blog posts, and next I publish them to my own web space, on my do…

This is a really lovely northern Rhône Syrah, made by Maxime Graillot, son of Alan (the most famous grower in that appellation of Crozes-Hermitage). It’s quite an edgy, polarising sort of wine, though: with its high acidity and bold, striking flavours, some will fall in love while others will find …

Here I take a look at New Zealand Syrah, tasting two top-notch examples on camera. Will it be the next big thing from Kiwiland? Too soon to say, with less than 300 hectares of Syrah planted in the whole country. But I’m a big fan – I’m excited by the wines that I’ve tried so far.

[[ that …

At the Pinot Noir 2010 symposium I was interviewed by Jamie Drummond of Good Food Revolution - you can view the interview here:

Jamie Drummond on Food and Wine: Episode 12 - Jamie Goode from GoodFoodRevolution on Vimeo.

[[ that is a substance summary only. Visit my website for full hyperlinks, ot…

Just on my way back from Sarah Ahmed’s 50 Great Portuguese Wines tasting. Having done that job last year, I know how difficult it is to narrow down that selection to just 50: Portugal must be the most underrated wine-producing country on the planet. Sarah is pictured above, with one of her favourite…

New Zealand is, of course, famous for its Sauvignon Blanc, becoming famous for its Pinot Noir, and beginning to construct a name for its Syrahs. But what of its Rieslings? I think they’re a bit underrated. They are plus quite hard to sell.
But I’ve tried some great examples of late, in both the dry…

Just a quick note to say that I’ll be moving servers by the next few days. I’ve outgrown my previous hosting service. Too many readers; too much traffic. Not a poor problem to have, but it does mean that there will be a short period where the site is down. I apologise for that. It’s called DNS serve…

Just been on to amazon and ordered a book recommended to me by Ted Lemon, who was at Pinot Noir 2010. Ted’s wines are great, and so anything he wants to put on my reading list is fine by me. It’s called ‘Agroecology’, by Miguel Altieri. Not cheap at £30, but I’m hoping it will be very good.
On the…

Just a few more pictures from my recent trip.

The glorious views by lake Wanaka from Rippon, Central Otago (above).

that is an aerial view showing Kawarau (left) and Pisa Range (right, with its distinctive black poplar trees), in Central Otago’s Pisa district.
that is one of the black poplars at P…

Keith P posed an interesting question in response to one of my blog posts from New Zealand. To paraphrase: does having a nice experience when visiting a wine region of country introduce a degree of positive bias in subsequent reviews?
Let’s put that another way. Would it, in fact, be better for wine…