Jefford on Monday
What’s in the farmer’s head
In Burgundy, the small vineyard parcel (cru or lieu-dit) is sacrosanct. In Bordeaux, the property name is sacrosanct.
A label drinker comes out
[Andrew Jefford] I’ve never taken part in a true blind tasting. Have you?
Happy Birthday BB
[Andrew Jefford] The only European vineyard I know intimately is celebrating, tomorrow, the fortieth anniversary of its planting.
Bordeaux’s yield riddle
[Andrew Jefford] Aren’t lower yields, after all, a fundamental quality key to the best contemporary Bordeaux?
Behind the vinous eyes
[Andrew Jefford] To me ‘vinous’ is a precious tasting term, and a distinctive quality of certain wines only. The term is of value not least because vinous wines seem to me to be eminently gastronomic and digestible.
Royal – or magic?
[Andrew Jefford] Given the granite sands, the steep slopes, the shy plants, the low yields and the rich, perfumed, low-acid, stone-dense flavours, it’s not hard to see Albillo Real from the Gredos as a kind of Spanish echo of Viognier or Condrieu.
Wine’s trust fund
[Andrew Jefford] The Kurniawan trial marked the end of innocence in the wine world; the verdict marks the end of trust.
Wine in troubled times
[Andrew Jefford] I feel some unease at such times – about assuming that there are no lines of connection whatsoever between a family annihilated in a bombed home and a blocked malolactic fermentation, or between a swiftly fatal disease with no cure and th
The Doctor Doctored
[Andrew Jefford] The amelioration of ‘light’ Bordeaux wines with much darker wines from other regions is the most celebrated historical example of institutional cross-regional blending.
Debating Diam
[Andrew Jefford] Prior to a visit to the Diam production facility at Céret in Roussillon (one of two factories, the other being in Spain’s Extremadura), I polled my Facebook contacts on the topic. The results were bewilderingly diverse.