We really do want everyone to enjoy their office party, friends’ get-together, Christmas shopping pitstop and joyous/fraught family gathering. We genuinely want every customer that graces us with their presence at this most magical time of year to enter and leave our establishments full of festive cheer. Not least because the run-up to Christmas is crucial for hospitality – this is when we (hopefully) squirrel away bumper takings to get us through the bleak midwinter of January and early February.

None of which makes it easier to deal with the seasonal plague that is ADS – Amateur Drinking Syndrome. It’s our bread and butter dealing with those who have had a good night out and sometimes a few too many, but come Christmas there’s a painfully challenging spike in the tired and emotional drinker.

We appreciate that not everyone has the same alcohol tolerance, and that often those who choose not to drink for the rest of the year – birthdays and anniversaries aside – often decide to have a tipple or two come Christmas. But – in the same way that I wouldn’t recommend a whole raw scotch bonnet pepper to someone whose normal experience of spice is a mild korma – someone who normally sips half a lager and only has one small glass of red with their main course deciding to preload, hard, with G&Ts, then to segue into Champagne before sampling wines of every grape and colour, and deciding that it’s finally time to try plum eau-de-vie for the first time, is misguided. I’ve watched this happen, repeatedly, and it’s never pretty.

In my long and undistinguished career I’ve seen what mishandled festive cheer can do. I’ve witnessed diners passed out face-down in dinner plates on the first course into a 10-course tasting menu with paired wines, narrowly avoided someone staggering into a flambé trolley as the alcohol was being ignited, and have had to spoon countless customers into cabs as they were beyond the ability to hold, let alone focus on, their phones.

Of course it’s all part of the service, but a little more pacing and little less haste would mean everyone having a better time. As a sage Basque bartender once told me midway through a crawl through the streets of San Sebastián: ‘Never eat without drinking, never drink without eating.’ Always remember that aggressive preloading on an empty stomach is the root cause of the majority of grisly ADS incidents.

Christmas comes but once a year, it’s true, but there’s a lot of it to get through. So please pace yourselves better than the average hospitality worker does come their January Christmas party… but that, of course, is another story.

Joe Warwick is head of hospitality for Cubitt House, which runs eight luxurious London pubs with restaurants.

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The post Joe Warwick: ‘Come Christmas, there’s a painfully challenging spike in the tired and emotional drinker’ appeared first on Decanter.

Looking for inspiration? Here are the best things to read, watch and listen to for wine lovers. We’ve picked out some of the top wine-related books, TV shows, podcasts and more for your enjoyment!

Read

On Burgundy

You might not be able to afford the top wines, but you can still read about them. Published in October 2023, this anthology of 59 wine tales endeavours to capture the essence of the region’s two main grapes, its terroirs and its special bottles. Contributors include Decanter’s Andrew Jefford, Allen Meadows, Eric Asimov and Aubert de Villaine. Many will no doubt turn straight to the essay on ‘Can Good Burgundy ever be for Normal People?’

Available through Académie du Vin Library

Vintage Crime: A Short History of Wine Fraud

Since ancient times the wine world has been plagued by criminals keen to make a fast buck, whether through ‘amelioration, adulteration or deception’. Rebecca Gibb
MW takes a romp through a history of wine crime – from the days of Imperial Rome to 21st-century New York – told chronologically through 10 wine frauds. Meet the fraudsters and their victims, the merchants, producers and collectors, in this entertaining and illuminating read.

Available through Amazon UK

Oxford Companion to Wine

First published in 1994, The Oxford Companion to Wine remains a definitive reference work on the subject. This fifth edition, edited by Julia Harding, Jancis Robinson MW and Tara Q Thomas, features more than 100 new writers (of a total 267) and over 270 new entries; every existing entry has also been reviewed and updated. Included for the first time are Estonia, Finland and Latvia – places previously considered too cold for winemaking – as well as Gabon, Senegal and Uganda.

Available through Oxford University Press

The Classic Wine Library Reader

Edited by Richard Mayson, this is an anthology of selected writing from titles published in the Classic Wine Library over the past decade. Sections include historical background, winemaking, regional perspectives and wines of note. Topics range from manzanilla Sherry to the origins of biodynamics and South Africa’s apartheid legacy and the wines of Japan. Look out for essays from Decanter contributors including Rebecca Gibb MW, Matt Walls, Anne Krebiehl MW and Stephen Brook. A lovely book to dip in and out of.

Available through Infinite Ideas

Watch

The Mega Trade

Wine educator Sam Povey set himself a challenge this summer: to trade his way, with his followers on social media, from a bottle of Yellowtail Shiraz all the way up to a bottle
of one of the world’s most expensive wines, Domaine de la Romanée Conti’s Romanée Conti. It’s all taking place on his entertaining and informative @sampovey.wine Instagram page. As Decanter‘s November issue went to press, he had worked his way up to Domaine Coffinet-Duvernay, Bâtard-Montrachet GC 2018.

Stefan Neumann’s Blind Tasting Course

Hosted by Master Sommelier Stefan Neumann, this online video course is aimed at anyone sitting wine exams that involve blind tasting, but will be useful to any wine lover looking to hone their skills. Fifty bite-sized videos lasting three hours in total are divided into nine modules, covering not only how to identify grape variety, region and vintage blind, but also how to sharpen your senses, build a taste profile and expand your vocabulary.

The Wines of Tomorrow

This three-part online series features conservations with winemakers, thinkers and innovators in the wine sphere. Hosted by Michelle Bouffard, a Canadian sommelier, wine educator, journalist and founder of the Tasting Climate Change conference, the first episode (live now) sees her chat to South African winemaker Andrea Mullineux. Further episodes will air on 11 October and 6 December. Free to Wine Scholar Guild members; non-members can enjoy one free replay.

Eastbound Westbound

Reviewed by James Mottram

US merchant Jeffrey Davies takes a sprightly ramble through the origins of Franco- American wine relations, first fostered by Thomas Jefferson when he visited Bordeaux in 1787. Davies meets four major wine families with links between the vineyards of California and Bordeaux. Directed by Julien Couson, the film’s historical re-enactments are a little amateur, but Davies’ amiable style, whether chatting to critic Robert Parker or Prince Robert of Luxembourg, brings this transatlantic love affair vividly alive. Apple TV+, Prime Video, Google Play

Listen

Looking Into Wine

What’s it like being the editor of Decanter magazine? Find out in a special 30-minute ‘Careers in Wine’ episode of Italian sommelier Mattia Scarpazza’s Looking Into Wine podcast. The interview with Amy Wislocki, who has been at the helm of the magazine for 23 years, touches on topics such as how Decanter has changed during that time, how to succeed as a wine writer, and how the magazine coped during the pandemic.

The Wine Conversation

The founder of this twice-monthly podcast, Sarah Kemp, was publisher and managing director of Decanter for more than 25 years, making her one of the most well-connected people in the wine world. The Wine Conversation features in-depth conversations with leading figures in wine alongside monthly Omnibus, magazine-style episodes, which cover wine news and expert views in an engaging, and consumer-friendly fashion.

The Wine CEO #133 Rhône

Each week, certified sommelier Sarah Roth covers a different wine topic aimed at helping wine lovers feel more confident. In this episode, she interviews Matt Walls, Decanter’s Rhône correspondent and author of Wines of the Rhône. Walls gives an overview of the Rhône valley, explaining just why the wines from the north and south are so different, and shares the top things you need to know about this region. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, other major podcast apps; also available via YouTube.

The Wine Makers

This weekly podcast is recorded in Sonoma Valley, with more than 285 episodes aired to date. Wine pros Sam Coturri, Bart Hansen, Brian Casey and host John Myers are joined by US winemakers such as Andy Beckstoffer and Diana Snowden Seysses – a Napa native now making wine in Burgundy – who chat about all aspects of their work. Relaxed conversation gives listeners fascinating insight into the joys, trials and tribulations of making wine. Themed episodes cover everything from compost and corks to bottle reuse programmes.

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Caroline Frey, owner of Paul Jaboulet Aîné, has decided to uncouple La Chapelle (and its white counterpart, Le Chevalier de Sterimberg) from the Paul Jaboulet Aîné brand by creating a separate entity, Domaine de la Chapelle, which will be the new home for these two wines.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the 2022 Domaine de la Chapelle red and white wines

Tasting notes and scores for the 2022 Domaine de la Chapelle red and white wines:

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It was pure and driving in the mouth, clearly acid-structured and hence intense – yet age had brought a softening, a tenderness, a singing quality. This was not a harsh, abrupt wine to sip but, like the aromas, expansive; poised yet mellow. Indeed the aromatic trace of the fruit on the tongue had a perfumed lift: an uncommon trait, but always lovely.

The wine was so refined and choice that I swallowed, greedily and unprofessionally – and thought of the vineyard I had just walked through. The way it looked. That mass of bright limestone pebbles in a nourishing matrix of loamy clay… I’ve seen that before. Hmm… hang on a minute…

I try to avoid facile comparisons of this sort. Every vineyard and every wine-growing region is unique: itself and only itself, subject to its own laws of site and sky and season, freighted down with its own disasters and joys. And yet, and yet. I was 6,000km from the Côte d’Or, but this glass of Pinot and the mental image I retained of its vineyard insisted on some sort of comparison. The wine? Norman Hardie’s Unfiltered County Pinot Noir 2014 from Prince Edward County in Canada’s Ontario.

I should stress the differences. The Ontario wine had just 10.5% alcohol. That’s a minus for me: I like alcohol and the wealth, warmth and emotion it sends coursing through a wine (and my veins). This wine, though, had perfect balance, its resonant acidity matched by the inner sweetness and length which can only come from teased, full-season ripeness and its sage gift of alcohol. It didn’t taste short, like an early-picked wine from a warmer site.

‘You can’t duplicate maturity,’ as Hardie’s fellow winemaker Keith Tyers at Closson Chase says. ‘You can’t replace the texture.’

In autumn 2014, the wine’s mother vines had come through the first of two brutal, vine-killing Canadian winters. Prince Edward County is a broad, water-incised peninsula, almost an island, dangling like a broad-shouldered bunch of grapes into Lake Ontario from its northern shoreline.

Unlike the Niagara Peninsula, on the other side of the lake and down at the western end, Prince Edward County has water on the southern side only. To the north lies the Arctic. Its winters are almost boreal. As in China’s Ningxia, the vines must be buried through the dark months, like hibernating chipmunks.

‘If I’d known,’ says Hardie’s fellow Pinoteer Colin Stanners of the eponymous winery, ‘how difficult this business of hilling up and preparing for the winter is, I might never have started here. It really limits our yields; with hilling you never get more than 70% recovered buds.’

Higher yields are possible by creating little geotextile tents over the pruned canes, as many of their fellow growers now do. For all that, Hardie prefers hilling; the clay, he says, that provides the matrix for the region’s limestone needs (in this climate) to be moved and aerated.

‘The County’, as it’s known, doesn’t just produce fine Pinot from the likes of Hardie and Stanners. The Closson Chase Chardonnays are excellent; Pinot Gris can be good if terse; and Jonas Newman and Vicki Samaras at Hinterland have been making impressive sparkling wine, led by an exceptional blanc de blancs.

Everyone, though, faces the same challenges from the weather, with intermittent winter vine kill and inconsistent summers occasionally producing vintage wipeouts. It’s not certain that global warming will help, since the depth of Lake Ontario (244m at its deepest; that’s 802 feet) holds change in check. Optimism is always tempered here. ‘There’s no fake news,’ Hardie says, ‘from Mother Nature.’

They all keep going, though, just waiting for those generous vintages and the occasional glimpses of greatness and glory they imply. Wine places that can give drinkers greatness and glory in a glass, no matter how occasional, are rare.

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Côte-Rôtie

Young Côte-Rôties are normally fairly easy to read, but that wasn’t the case with the 2022s. Many of them appeared very fruity, with soft structures, lacking energy and aromatic detail. There were some excellent exceptions however, often from those originating from old vines grown on schist and fermented with a proportion of whole bunch.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring Côte-Rôtie & Condrieu 2022 wines

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Matt Walls’ top-scoring Côte-Rôtie & Condrieu 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 95 points or above, and are listed Condrieu then Côte-Rôtie in score order.

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It felt like I was tasting two different vintages while working my way through more than 100 St-Josephs this year. Some of the reds were diminutive but fresh and well-balanced; others were soft, luxurious and liqueur-fruited.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring St-Joseph 2022 wines

See all 400 Rhône 2022 tasting notes and scores

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Northern Rhône 2022: Full report and top-scoring wines

Matt Walls’ top-scoring St-Joseph 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 92 points or above, and are listed white then red in score order.

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Cornas

It was particularly dry in Cornas, with about 100mm of rain between April and harvest, according to Pierre Clape. It’s no surprise therefore that the ripening blockages are felt more keenly here than elsewhere in the north. ‘But the leaves stayed green, in contrast to 2003,’ says Clape.

Tannins can be difficult, rough and fibrous in places, but, both here and elsewhere, sensitive use of oak has helped to paper over the cracks and add some palate weight.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring Cornas & St-Péray 2022 wines

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Matt Walls’ top-scoring Cornas & St-Péray 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 92 points or above, and are listed in order of St-Péray and Cornas in score order.

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Thanksgiving is an excuse to indulge in the company of your family – and Thanksgiving 2021 will likely see even more indulgence than normal as people celebrate getting together again at this time of year. So pull out your best bottles and follow these top wine serving tips for a successful Thanksgiving.

Serve red wines at 16-18°C (61-65°F)

Your full-bodied California Cabernet or Brunello di Montalcino may be described as at the peak of its powers when served at ‘room temperature’.

However, ‘room temperature’ is an anachronism relating to old houses rather than modern houses with central heating, so serve full-bodied red wines at 16 to 18 degrees Celsius (roughly 61 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit). A full-bodied red wine that is too warm can become almost soupy, with flavours harder to distinguish and alcohol more noticeable.

It’s often best to serve light- and medium-bodied reds slightly cooler than this. The lightest reds – think Beaujolais, Frappato and even some Pinot Noir – can even benefit from being slightly chilled.

Try to keep wines clear of the kitchen during cooking, in particular. Things tend to get pretty warm and this may cause the contents of your cherished bottle to overheat.

Those with a temperature-controlled wine fridge may find it easier to navigate this issue, of course, but be aware that wines will warm up in the glass after serving, too.

Use an ice bucket to chill wine quickly

Ice buckets come in various shapes and sizes, but if you don’t have a specific one to-hand then other containers will do, as long as they’re deep enough. Of course, you’ll also need some ice cubes. If your fridge-freezer doesn’t produce a ready supply, or you don’t have enough ice cube trays, then plan ahead and buy a large bag of ice.

Add a reasonable amount of water to the ice bucket to help transfer the warmth away from the wine bottles more efficiently.

‘Use plenty of ice cubes (or ideally crushed ice) in a bucket with some cold water and lots of salt – yes, salt,’ Xavier Rousset MS previously told Decanter.

‘Make sure the bottle is submerged to the top to be more efficient. Your wine should be cool in about 15 minutes.’

Put Champagne and sparkling wines in the fridge 48 hours before drinking

Louis Roederer’s chef de cave and executive vice-president, Jean-Baptiste Lécaillon, told guests at a Decanter Fine Wine Encounter in 2014 that his advice was to ‘put Champagne in the fridge 48 hours before drinking it’, if possible.

If you’re on a shorter time scale – but not yet reaching for the emergency ice bucket – then the Comité Champagne recommends placing a bottle on its side at the bottom of the fridge four hours before serving.

The ideal serving temperature for Champagne is 8-10 degrees Celsius (47-50 degrees Fahrenheit), it says.

Let your wines breathe

Most experts agree that pulling the cork and leaving the bottle in a quiet corner won’t really do much, but there’s debate about how much to aerate wine before drinking, and particularly on whether or not to decant.

While swirling wine in your glass is a form of aeration, some winemakers and experts believe that decanting red wines can help to soften tannins and release fruit flavours.

There are no hard and fast rules, but it’s wise to decant any wine with sediment, such as a vintage Port or an older vintage of red wine, to avoid a gritty mouthful of wine.

In a guide in 2010, celebrated wine expert Steven Spurrier wrote that he would generally aim to decant around one hour before serving, although this varied depending on the bottle. Young, tannic red wines benefit the most, he said, adding that older white wines should be decanted, too.

‘If I have to open a bottle at the last minute, I use a “ship’s” decanter with a very wide base, and swill (without shaking) the wine around the sides for about 30 seconds to make up for lost time,’ wrote Spurrier, who was consultant editor at Decanter at the time.

Some sommeliers advise against aerating an old vintage too much due to its fragility.

Food & wine pairing: keep it simple

If you’re keeping things simple this year and serving one main dish, then you might have time to think more precisely about the sort of wine that would work best with your Thanksgiving dinner.

But if there are a range of dishes on the table then, as a general rule, wines that have good levels of acidity can help to lift the meal.

An abundance of mouth-coating tannins, meanwhile, may dull your palate; not that bolder red wines won’t work – a bit of bottle age (or decanting in advance of serving) can help the tannins to integrate and reveal wonderful complexity.

All of that said, wine is about personal preference, too. In a 2016 article for Decanter, Ray Isle, executive wine editor at Food & Wine magazine, suggested choosing Thanksgiving wines that will make those around the table happy.

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The post Serving Thanksgiving wine: Expert tips appeared first on Decanter.

It’s an unusual style of red Hermitage this year: smaller in structure and stature than a usual year. Again, as with other appellations, it’s primarily down to problems with ripening – Guillaume Sorrel said it didn’t rain at all on the hill of Hermitage in June, July or August, and Maxime Chapoutier remembers the mercury hitting 40 ̊C as early as June.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring Hermitage 2022 wines

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Matt Walls’ top-scoring Hermitage 2022 wines:

The wines below scored 92 points and above, and are listed white then red in score order.

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After the disastrous 2021 vintage, 2022 is certainly a step up, though stylistically it couldn’t be more varied.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for top-scoring Crozes-Hermitage 2022 wines

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Matt Walls’ top-scoring Crozes-Hermitage 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 90 points or above, and are listed white then red in score order.

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‘Most will drink young and into the medium term, but the more tannic, structured wines will take a long time to soften, then age for decades’

Top-scoring northern Rhône 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 96 points or above, and are listed white then red in score order.

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Rasteau

Outside Châteauneuf, the best performing appellation was Rasteau. There were no problems with green tannins here, which Jérôme Bressy of Domaine Gourt de Mautens believes is thanks to the abundance of clay. The 2022 vintage has delivered wines with bright fruit, good concentration and balanced alcohol. They are often robustly tannic however, so pay close attention to drinking windows.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and score for top Rasteau, Cairanne & Vinsobres 2022 wines

Matt Walls’ top-scoring Rasteau, Cairanne & Vinsobres 2022 wines:

See below the top-scoring Rasteau, Cairanne and Vinsobres wines, listed by appellation and white then red in score order.

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Winemaker Rachel Lipman of Loew Vineyards works with local beekeepers to gather black locust honey. Its character changes year-to-year depending on the weather that season. Drought or heat produces darker honey. In rainy years, it might be lighter. Slight humidity without rain, more fragrant. The quality of the honey depends on the vintage.

Several weeks later, the grape harvest begins. Lipman gathers Muscat Canelli and Vidal Blanc from vineyards in the area and presses them together, the juice tasting of mixed flowers, mangoes and nectarines.

Simultaneously, she brews the honey with water in a style uncommon for American mead makers but followed by her family for generations in Central Europe, where they were famous for honey wine until World War II. Once warm, the honey water is combined with the freshly pressed juice, and the two are fermented together until dry. Barrel-aged for nine months, the elixir is bottled under the name Klara, after Lipman’s great-grandmother.

The surprise of Klara is its elegance and length. Its layered aromatics lead to a palate of harmony and nuance, bringing together floral notes with a very light, potpourri-like spice, stone fruits and a pleasantly piquant, mouthwatering finish. The flavours allude to honey yet avoid sweetness.

Thoughts of Klara have somehow followed me since first tasting it more than a year ago, coming to mind at least weekly for its complexity and distinctive origins. I’ve enjoyed it with multiple meals, alongside hamachi crudo (a garnished, thin-sliced yellowtail fish dish), spring pea risotto, game hen and rice, and I have talked to more people about it than I care to admit.

Hugh Johnson famously defined fine wine as wine worth talking about. Most fine wine circles assume it applies only to Vitis vinifera varieties. Wine, after all, is fermented from fruit; fine wine, from wine grapes. Klara would seem to break multiple rules. It includes the French-American hybrid Vidal Blanc and is partly made from fermented honey. Yet it also offers the complexity and brilliance of fine white wine.

So, where do we draw the line? Though sake is sometimes called rice wine, and mead honey wine, the reference is more affectionate than literal. Both are brewed, then fermented beverages. It is often argued each resembles beer more than wine. But unlike beer, sake uses mould, not malt, to convert starch from polished rice into sugar for fermentation. In mead, sugar is derived from honey mixed with water. Style and historical tradition determine differing proportions and temperatures as the elements are combined. Because of their distinctive processes, sake and mead are each considered their own category. And while I’ve had sake and mead worth talking about, I wouldn’t call either fine wine.

Johnson himself said part of the appeal of his definition is that it’s not attached to historic price or reputation. That seems to allow for unexpected exceptions. The Klara is neither pure mead nor pure wine but a synchronicity of the two, which may be part of its elevation. Just as not every wine achieves fine wine status, not every honey-grape ferment will become such an exception.

Lipman’s experience guided this combination. She brews mead in her ancestors’ tradition and makes wine from Maryland grapes; she surmised that the high-tone elements of the grapes might lift the woodsy character of the honey into a synthesis that surpasses what each delivers alone.

The result is a memorable expression of inland Maryland and a tribute to Lipman and her family. It also demonstrates the value of an open mind when it comes to fine wine. It’s the unexpected that so often gives us wine worth talking about.

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Lirac

On top of drought and intense heat in 2022, the west bank of the Rhône also had to deal with hail, which caused localised damage.

The reds in Lirac are very concentrated this year, sometimes overripe or sternly tannic. The whites and rosés based on Clairette tend to be the most vibrant.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and score for top Lirac & Tavel 2022 wines

See all 400 Rhône 2022 tasting notes and scores

Rhône 2022 full vintage report and top-scoring wines

Southern Rhône 2022 full vintage report and top-scoring wines

Matt Walls’ top-scoring Lirac & Tavel 2022 wines:

See below all of the Tavel and Lirac wines from the 2022 en primeur report.

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Gigondas

The picture is more mixed in Gigondas than in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with more instances of unripe tannin due to higher crop loads or picking too early.

The successful wines have impact, freshness and low alcohol, even if they aren’t always terribly deep or long in flavour. The best however are excellent, and I share the opinion of Louis Barruol of Château de Saint Cosme that these will age with interest.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and score for top Gigondas, Vacqueyras & Beaumes de Venise 2022 wines

Matt Walls’ top-scoring Gigondas, Vacqueyras & Beaumes de Venise 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 92 points or above, and are listed in order of Gigondas, Vacqueyras and Beaumes de Venise, white then red in score order.

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Antoine Daumen of Domaine de la Vieille Julienne was unsure about the season as it progressed. ‘We were cautious to begin with, we had low expectations,’ he says, ‘but the old vines were still very healthy at the end despite the dryness.’ He was pleased with the domaine’s wines in 2022 – they have silky tannins, moderate alcohol and good acidity.

Châteauneuf rode out the challenges of 2022 better than any other appellation this year, and unpleasantly green tannins are relatively rare.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2022 wines

Matt Walls’ top-scoring Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2022 wines:

The wines below all scored 95 points or above, and are listed white then red in score order.

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Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2019 & 2009: panel tasting results

Expert’s Choice: White Châteauneuf-du-Pape

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‘Hot, dry vintages tend to favour red wines and 2022 is no exception. In general the style is fairly concentrated and fruity, if not profound’

Top-scoring southern Rhône 2022 wines:

A selection of 30 southern Rhône wines which scored 95 points or above, listed white then red in score order.

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The post Southern Rhône 2022: Full report and top-scoring wines appeared first on Decanter.

Rhône 2022 en primeur vintage rating:

‘Never before has a vintage so confounded my expectations’

While preparing for my three-week visit to taste the 2022 vintage in the Rhône, I read that the region experienced the hottest and driest growing season since 1950. Even hotter and drier than 2003 – a vintage burned into the memory of local winemakers. So I approached the tastings with a degree of trepidation. Extreme conditions rarely make for balanced wines.

Scroll down for Matt Walls’ top-scoring Rhône 2022 wines

Top-scoring Rhône 2022 wines

See below the 30 highest scoring wines, listed white then red in score order.

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I can see why a certain kind of sommelier feels Bordeaux needs taking down a peg. It’s scarcely the wokest of appellations. There’s a temptation to see it as the choice of a mug with money. Security in the famous name. Reassurance in a hefty price. On some restaurant wine lists it seems that margins wax fat under the Bordeaux heading. I sometimes feel I’m the mug they’ve seen coming.

In truth, you can buy a perfectly recognisable Bordeaux – let’s call it claret – in a shop for around £8. If the rather sour, sappy taste of seaside Merlot is what you’re after, you don’t have many alternatives. You’ll pay a fair bit more, of course, for a flavour of ideally ripe berries, a sniff of oak and the tang of Cabernet, and for the smooth, swelling satisfaction of classic claret: quite a lot more.

At what level you start getting your claret kick is a personal thing. Mine is not especially ambitious. The accent and the idiom of the Gironde estuary is not easy to imitate – or to forget. Can it be just by chance that claret makes the ultimate all-round food wine? ‘Digestible’ is not the most glamorous adjective to apply to a wine, but it describes the great virtue of claret perfectly.

Why? I reckon it’s down to centuries of practice in pleasing the customer. If you bear in mind that Bordeaux’s local market is pretty limited, its monoculture of vines would be madness without the assurance of an eager foreign market. It is one of those products destined, in fact designed, to be exported.

The Gironde and its shipping is as much part of the Bordeaux equation as the gravel in the soil. For my part, I hardly ever find quite what I’m looking for in a Cabernet or a Merlot grown in any of the regions around the world that have adopted them – however well the fruit is grown, and however ripe the grapes or skilful the winemaking. You have to pity me.

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The post Hugh Johnson: ‘At what level you start getting your claret kick is a personal thing’ appeared first on Decanter.

When the Fiesta del Albariño began in 1953, it was very low-key – there were so few Albariños produced at the time that the same producer won the Best of Show award three years in a row – but it’s mushroomed into something much more substantial, with parades, concerts, workshops and loads of wines.

A couple of weeks before this summer’s event, Galicia hosted another, much smaller festival in the village of As Neves, close to the Portuguese border. This was the 17th edition of the Feria del Tinto de Rías Baixas, devoted to the region’s reds. Red plantings account for just under 1% of the Denominación de Origen’s 4,480ha, compared with Albariño’s 96%, so you can understand why the Feria is, of necessity, a more select event. And yet its significance is definitely growing.

The numbers are still comparatively small, but Rías Baixas’ reds are some of the most exciting in Spain right now – a secret that’s been shared by Hispanophiles for the past decade and is finally reaching a larger audience. Anyone who’s tasted the wines made by the likes of Albamar, Forjas del Salnés, Fulcro and Zárate – all brilliant Albariño producers, too – will surely agree. They are what Xurxo Alba of Albamar calls ‘reds with the souls of whites’: fresh, light-bodied, complex and wonderfully distinctive.

Wines from varieties such as Caiño Tinto or Espadeiro may seem new, but Galicia has a long history of growing red grapes. One of the most famous poems in the Galician language, Ramón Cabanillas’ Facing a Cup of Espadeiro Wine, hymned the latter grape’s nobility in 1917. Indeed, as recently as the 1970s, the overwhelming majority of what are now Rías Baixas’ vineyards were red. (The DO wasn’t created until 1988.) Marcos Barros of Maior de Mendoza, who’s just released a new blend called Variedades Tintas, told me that one of his strongest childhood memories was ‘treading red grapes with my grandfather’.

Why weren’t these wines better known? Firstly, most of them were produced in small quantities and drunk by the people who made them, or consumed in local bars and restaurants. Even today, Galician vineyards are generally atomised, divided into thousands of minifundios, or smallholdings. Also, they were often pretty rustic, with tooth enamel-threatening levels of acidity and rough, green, hair-shirt tannins.

Several things have helped to revolutionise the image of Rías Baixas’ reds. Climate change is the most important. Galicia remains a comparatively wet place to grow grapes, but harvests today are generally two weeks earlier than they were at the turn of the century. In the past, red grapes often struggled to ripen – and failed to do so entirely on occasion. Those warmer growing seasons started in 2011 and, despite the odd exception in later-picked vintages like 2021, have continued ever since. As a result, the region’s reds are much more consistent than they were.

Inspired by bodegas in Ribeira Sacra and, just over the border into Castilla y León, Bierzo, Rías Baixas started to take its own reds seriously again in 2005. That was the year when Rodri Méndez of Forjas del Salnés (aided by Bierzo superstar Raúl Pérez) and Señorío de Rubiós made their first reds. Sales were slow at first, but people gradually began to realise how brilliant these reds could be – and how much diversity they offer. In 2010, there were 16 producers; today, 45 of the region’s 178 bodegas make reds as well as whites.

Mencía, the main grape in Bierzo and Ribeira Sacra, is the second most planted red in Rías Baixas. But the list of eight permitted varieties also includes Brancellao, Caiño Tinto, Castañal, Espadeiro, Loureira Tinta, Pedral and Sousón, some of which are grown across the Miño river in Portugal, too. All of them have their qualities, but Espadeiro is the most fragrant and refined. Ramón Cabanillas, the poet who praised its unique qualities, was right all along.

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