Every year, Spanish wine writer José Peñîn and his team taste more than 8,000 wines to produce their annual wine guide, the Guia Peñín . For the second year running, I went to Madrid to...

" The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different." Aldous Huxley. The Kathleen &...

The weeks after harvest plod on like a protracted hangover. There is a deadened sense of pace at Gusbourne Estate as the days get darker and the weather grows colder. This week we were back in...

In the second of our collections of tasting notes on some of the great fortified wines, Victoria looks at some of the most venerable sherries on the market. The VOS and VORS...

We start a series of tasting notes on the three great fortified wines with Julia on port. With such great variety – from fresh, delicate tawny and colheita ports to rich, sweet,...

Growing grapes is often compared to raising a family. You nurture your offspring from infancy with tenderness and compassion. You feed and water them. In the blink of an eye, you watch as they...

While their bigger and more downmarket rivals offer increasingly cut-throat deals on wine (three bottles for £10 or even £9) to lure customers into their stores to buy food etc, Waitrose has...

Lindsay Hamilton, pictured here, finally files this report of the UK wine trade wedding of the year. It got left on the computer in his country residence, apparently, so has taken some time to...

The Argentine wine scene continues to be affected by the arrival of new Chilean investors who have so far invested in areas such as Luján de Cuyo, La Consulta, Perdriel and Agrelo. Based on...

Philip Harper is a great advertisement for the rejuvenating properties of sake. Although now 42, he still looks just like the recent graduate (Oxford, German and English Literature) he was in 1988...

The Pinot Noir fruit in one crate weighs between 15 and 20 kilograms.   The trusty tractor with a train of trailers stands by to be stacked up with...

The wines of the Loire Valley have always seemed to Julia and me to attract much less than their fair share of exposure and praise. Julia even made trying to combat this phenomenon the subject of...

8am, Thursday 9 Oct 2008. Fields are still misty as the Kentish sunrise washes through the haze. It’s going to be good weather for grape-picking....

Trust England to witness the headline ‘Heavy Rain Brings Flood Warning’ in the same week that the grape harvest begins. At the time of writing, the Gusbourne Estate team is on the brink of...

The rabbit nets that caused me so much unbridled joy in YITV5 made a delightful re-appearance this week, returning to inflict more pain as surely as the masked psychopath returns at the end of...