Andrew Jefford's articles
Drinker’s delight
[Andrew Jefford] The smell and taste of wine is, after all, magnetic north for all of us; everything else is just the scenery along the way.
The existential winegrower
[Andrew Jefford] Making good wine is a free act of self-definition; it doesn’t seem fanciful to suggest that what we like in the taste of wine is the taste of this freedom.
Of tourists and toadstools
[Andrew Jefford] New consumers have the money, leisure and desire to visit, explore and learn. As a result, visitor pressure has grown with toadstool velocity. For many producers, indeed, it’s reached crisis levels.
The great grape census
[Andrew Jefford] This new database charts exactly what varieties are grown in which regions around the world; readers can also follow major planting trends around the world during the first decade of this new century.
The Sancerre gauntlet
[Andrew Jefford] As a message of the general dissatisfaction which I’ve heard repeatedly expressed towards the INAO over the past three years, though, the Sancerre challenge is clear.
‘It's our year!’
[Andrew Jefford] For many French winegrowers, 2013 has been a catalogue of anguish. But for Languedoc, it is a good vintage.
Nutt Slammer, anyone?
[Andrew Jefford] Professor David Nutt and his colleagues had developed the synthetic alcohol substitutes.
The last trees in the forest
[Andrew Jefford] When you taste that fortified wine and others like it, you have to ask yourself: could Barossa Shiraz ever make a better wine than this is?
Of jellyfish and guardsmen
[Andrew Jefford] If we were to regard place and the cultural traditions of place as the primary translators of wine flavour, and variety as secondary and anecdotal, we’d be wiser wine lovers.
The Gobi wine mystery
[Andrew Jefford] Once the enormous vineyard challenges are overcome, and a couple of decades of experiment has got underway to match site and variety, then the Gobi desert vineyards of Ningxia and Wuhai may surprise us all.