See also Those wine faults in full . Along with about 30 others, I spent all of yesterday cloistered in an upper room at Australia House in London being taught how to taste wine. The...

Steve Dutton, Germany:   Here is a link to an article in New Scientist about a wine tasting robot that is supposed to be able to "sniff out" certain kinds of...

Patricia, London: I just couldn't miss the opportunity to comment on your recent RSVP (ha-ha!) comments .  I agree that Alsace can be overly austere in its youth, but does often come round...

In response to news of the AWRI's recent breakthrough in the management of Brett , notably in sequencing the genome of Dekkera ( Brettanomyces ) bruxellensis , and comments in our...

See Peter Godden's response in More on the battle against Brett . Researchers at the AWRI (Australian Wine Research Institute) in Adelaide have achieved a major breakthrough in their...

The world's wine producers spend a lot of time asking themselves and each other how to persuade more people to drink wine. And yet they continue to sell the vast majority of their production in...

In the 1990s I went to take a look at Amorim in Portugal , the world’s pre-eminent cork supplier. On the way to one of their cork processing plants my host anxiously discussed the weather...

Joe Asch, Hanover, NH:   What does is mean that a wine is marked by ‘reduction’, what the French call a ‘ go ût de réduit ’?...

Rami, GB:   I recently came across VA or volatile acidity and could not understand it fully. Is is something the winemaker can manipulate? This was told with reference...

Philip Harvey, Dorset: I know you must have discussed this plenty of times before on this site, but just what  is that 'wet wool' taste that affects some white wine? It seems to come up most...

Andy, Harrogate: I was recently fortunate to share a bottle of Bass Phillip Premium Chardonnay 1999 with some friends. The depth of flavours were incredible but the wine had a curious fine...

Jim Dove, St Louis, MO:...

Simon Tam, Hong Kong: Can a 'flat' on the nose and abruptly, 'off-the-cliff' type finish wine...

Ray Farris, Singapore: Hi Jancis, Two questions about off smells in...

I wrote the following article for the dozen or so publications I syndicate a column to every two months. It has just appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and stirred up quite a response....