Welcome !
This week is the London Wine Trade Fair at Excel .... tasted the 2008 Bordeaux vintage ... mixed impressions, but all good. Am also getting to know Russian and Moldovian wines ... the Black Sea is where it all began, remember!! There was a show-offy, posing young sommelier from some uber-trendy restaurant in London who came up and stood next to me to taste... and he exclaimed "Russian wines? That's new!"
Last week I visited some stunning wineries in Kent and Sussex with my fellow members of the British Circle of Wine Writers and Julia Trustran-Eve of the English Wine Producers ... see more photos and get tasting notes in my DIARY ...
This is my friend and colleague, Terence Kenny, of Champagne Pannier, at the launch of my new book in Verona (March 27th), which he so generously sponsored!
See where I have been and what I have been tasting, in my Diary of a Wine Critic ...
I have been writing about, editing, publishing, tasting and judging wine since before editing Vintage International Magazine in Paris in 1995. As a student in Paris in the 80s, I was thrilled to discover that there was more to wine than my youthful flirtations withGallo Burgundy, Mateus Rosé, and Boonesfarm. My university peers in Paris were sipping Richebourg and sporting cravats whilst dancing the night away at Castel’s. It took me a while to figure out that there were other things to do with wine other than drink it, and that it might become a career choice. That said, I still drink far more than I write ...
It is my intent to celebrate here, the traditional, the hand-crafted, the indigenous, and the terroir-driven wines ... the wines that speak to us of the place from whence they came.
Look out for the new publications in 2012:
- An eight-language wine dictionary - publication Spring 2012
- New edition of PAIRING WINE AND FOOD (Spring 2012, Burford Books)
- The new series based on GOOD FOOD FINE WINE (Cassell): GOOD FOOD FINE WINE: Italy (2012) and GOOD FOOD FINE WINE: China (2013)
- The launch of THE WINE LADY'S LIST: an on-line wine buying service where you can buy my recommendations directly from small winemakers at their ex-cellar consumer prices and have them delivered to your door with no duty or shipping hassles.
Linda
