Say “Spanish wine” and most people will think Rioja. And until we started planning a trip there I didn’t really know more than that; renowned reds and some good whites. So. La Rioja is a northern region of Spain, just inland from the Basque country around Bilbao and overlapping with it a little. It is …
Bordeaux is a wonderful city, with plenty of lovely looking shops and a limitless number of eating options. And with the most significant wine AOCs scattered around it like spokes on a wheel (Graves/Sauternes to the south, St Emilion/Pomerol to the east and Medoc to the west) there couldn’t really be a better base for …
The Loire is a big river in a big valley, and so the wine region of the Loire is – you’ve guessed it – big. We didn’t quite appreciate this and probably set out to explore too much of it in one long weekend. So that’s my first piece of advice: if you’re here for …
Jump in the car, drive down to Dover, get on the ferry and go champagne tasting. Don’t blame me if you come home with three cases of great champagnes your friends have never heard of. And they’ll have cost less than the next eighteen bottles of froth you won’t have to buy in the UK, …
The high point of any wine-tasting trip for me is finding an unexpected gem. In Champagne this took the form of a cosy bar in Epernay which showcased small makers who produce far too little of their wonderful champagnes to ever be exported outside France, heck, outside Champagne. In Burgundy it was a little wine …