aplofthouse

A fortnight ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon on the lawns at Yorkshire Heart Vineyard in Nun Monkton, glass in hand, for the third annual Great Yorkshire Wine & Fizz Festival. It's a small event by national standards but was still attended by hundreds and those camping overnight too! It's also one of the clearest signals I've seen yet that Yorkshire wine has stopped being a curiosity and started being a category. 'You can't make good wine up North' 'You can't produce wines in Yorkshire, are...

There is a country in the heart of Europe, which is one of my absolute favourites to visit — smaller than Wales, squeezed between Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia — that has been making wine continuously for over two thousand years. Its winemakers helped pioneer the modern natural wine movement. Its indigenous grape varieties grow nowhere else on earth. Its amber wines are among the most sought-after bottles in the international fine wine world. And the vast majority of people who drink...

On 24 May 1976, eleven French judges gathered at the InterContinental Hotel in Paris to taste two blind flights of wine — Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and California. The man who organised it, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier, was taking a calculated risk. He expected the French to win comfortably. He expected a polite, collegiate afternoon. What happened instead became the most consequential moment in the modern history of wine. A Chardonnay from Chateau...