Last month I took part in the Concorso Enologico Internazionale, or International Wine Competition in Verona, set up and run by Veronafiera, the organisers of Vinitaly. Vinitaly is that monster...

Although I studied Maths as well as Philosophy at Oxford, I'm not too keen on the combination of numbers with wine appreciation. Drinking and assessing wine is a subjective rather than an...

Jonathan Brittain, Wales:   Finding your Bordeaux 2005 vintage reports very interesting as I'm sure most people are. I have come to understand your taste with respect to...

Tim James, www.grape.co.za , South Africa: It is often unclear to me whether tasters who use and publish scores (including myself!) claim to judge by a universal...

Charles Taylor, London: I'm sure you must get fed up with discussions on the merits and demerits of scoring wines, but... I'm a new subscriber, and looking at your Kiwi Pinot Noir tasting...

Rami, GB: I...

Michael Havens, Napa Valley: Having found your site, I've been following with interest the astonishing...

What do my scores mean? Noble Yip, Hong Kong: Dear Jancis,...

Perhaps it's a British thing. We are wary of over-enthusiasm, and condescending towards excessive praise. At least, that's the stereotype, and I conform to it. I suspect I am not alone. At the...

Jamie Taylor, New South Wales:   1. I noticed someone sent a 2005 Bordeaux email with a comment by Michael Broadbent on Pichon Lalande: "Very deep, velvety, very good...

Robert Kibble, Slough: I have two questions regarding wine tasting. Firstly, when tasting wines a second time, do you find your scores are consistent?  I've often wondered about the precision...

Eric Lecours, San Francisco: Recently I attended a talk given by a long-time Berkeley importer of repute who discussed wine tasting, comparing his approach to that of an influential American...

Charles W Froehlich Jr, San Pasqual Imports, San Diego: I am an importer of Bordeaux to the Southern California region.  I recently returned from a tasting of the current 2004s, and eagerly...

For those trying to find decent wine cellar software to use to keep track of their wine purchases and/or tasting notes, fellow purple pagers suggest the following: use one of the...

Several purple pagers have asked me in advance of going to a tasting involving particularly young wine what they should look out for and here are my suggestions. Tasting young red wine...