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Tasting articles
Alder's most memorable California wines 2025
Pleasure – and meaning – in the glass. In reflecting on a year of tasting, I am fascinated by what persists in memory. Which wines have remained vivid and which...
Alder Yarrow
Wednesday 31 December 2025
• 13 min read
Free for all
Shadows over northern California
Demand, and prices, are falling. A version of this article is published by the Financial Times. Above, the view from Smith Madrone on Napa Valley’s Spring Mountain in early November...
Jancis Robinson
Saturday 27 December 2025
• 1 min read
More California
Alder on America
On 1 April, while the rest of the country was engaged in harmless pranks, California’s governor Jerry Brown was getting...
Tasting articles
Napa Valley has arguably overtaken the Médoc and St-Émilion/Pomerol as the world’s centre of wine-based financial optimism. There is no...
Tasting articles
Good news! The number of British wine importers taking California seriously has increased enormously recently. No longer the preserve of...
Nick on restaurants
A version of this article is also published by the Financial Times. Chefs shoulder a heavy responsibility, one that is...
Tasting articles
Until very recently, Santa Barbara County was probably the most significant wine region I had never visited. Well, that’s not...
Free for all
This is a much longer version of an article also published by the Financial Times. Vine-growers in the southern hemisphere...
Tasting articles
One of many reasons for my recent trip to South and North America was to at long last accept an...
Nick on restaurants
Of all the restaurants in all the world, Sierra Mar at the Post Ranch Inn on Highway 1 at Big...
Wines of the week
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Purple Pager and San Francisco-based barrel broker Mel Knox has been muttering Scherrer at...
Alder on America
In the early 1990s, while working in what was essentially the research and development arm of Silicon Valley Bank, Rob...
Alder on America
Analogies can be dangerous, but for anyone who doesn’t know the more detailed geography of California, it may be easiest...
Alder on America
Some years are unarguably more momentous than others. The question is whether we can really recognise them without the benefit...
Tasting articles
27 Nov As a celebration of Thanksgiving Day (and as part of our Throwback Thursday series) we are republishing and...
Alder on America
A good friend of mine was recently given the opportunity to join the most exclusive club in the world of...
Don't quote me
I finally made it to the annual get-together of European wine communicators organised by Ryan and Gabriella Opaz and Robert...
Free for all
This is a longer version of an article published in the Financial Times. See full tasting notes on all 88...
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