Amazing Great Greek Wines
A smashing event in Warsaw, with Yiannis Karakasis MW & Greg Michailos bringing the country's top winemakers, from legend Paris Sigalas to Elena Kechris.
🇬🇷 wine is just so exciting, and no platform shows it better than #greatgreekwines
New Masters of Wine announced today. 🤞 for a few special persons out there
Sleeping in Indonesia 🇮🇩 is serious business!
The masters of the skill can even defy gravity.
If you need a bed and aircon, you’re clearly a tourist.
Happy New Year! 🍾
I this day celebrate away from it all, to regroup & redefine. Leclerc-Briant surely tastes special under the palm tree.
And to all those of you (apparently many) bruised & battered by 2025, pour yourself a glass of Champagne & start over. When healed, every scar makes us stronger.
What's the surprise? ;-)
It’s been a hell of a year! 📆
I’ve tasted north of 8,000 wines, here is my single best for each month.
Thanks 🙏 to all who shared.
It's the last Christmas of my 40s so I decided to drink up all my younger wines.
1976 Monfalletto, a gift from my friend Alberto Cordero, still energetic and youthful as we are.
Mas Amiel Maury 40YO a secret fav of me: complexity of coffee & brown sugar, more dry-vinous than Port.
Merry🎄!!!
A shout out for talented winemaker Pepe Rodríguez de Vera. His Sopla Poniente fortifieds & vinos de pasto from Andalucia are captivating expressions of Palomino and PX. +also impressed by his other 🇪🇸projects: a smart Chardonnay sparkler & a fine new-wave Rioja.
Ciao Anafi 🏝️, I miss you.
Flight W61548, August 2025
Samuel Tinon is the master of the Tokaj Dry Szamorodni, which he ages like Jura Vin Jaune for 6y in oak under flor.
But now in search of drinkability, he is trialling earlier bottling, with 1–3y of flor only—a Savagnin sous voile approach. We tried six and they were 💯
My top picks of the 1st edition of Aszú Premier in #Tokaj, showcasing unreleased young versions of the King of Wines.
2023 is looking like an excellent vintage in the making, while acid levels in 2021s are often heroic (up to 13.7 g/l today).
Special dinner at Michelin 2* Stand in Budapest to mark 20 years of the Bott winery in Tokaj, on the region's stars.
Great food (the pumpkin course 💯), world-class service throughout, delightful wines (mostly magnums). Here's to another 20 years! 🥂
30th edition of Nebbiolo Prima. I’ve come here so long I have been promoted to the Evergreens, a polite way it’s time to make room for the young? 😉
2022 Barolo is a good vintage, enjoy before 2021s. 2023 Barbaresco in contrast is tight and tannic.
#NebbioloReport due out in May
Vajra’s Bricco delle Viole was my best 2021 Barolo in this year’s Nebbiolo Top 💯, so what a treat to have a full vertical:
2021 again the best, 2022 impressively chiselled, 2019 2019, 2012 delicious.
Full notes in the next #NebbioloReport.
+A lavish dinner at Belsit…
Hypeable
I think his tasters have already been there.
But not sure it’s hybeable enough material
Been like this for ages. Also Luca Maroni. Italy gets the credit for inventing the 110-point scale.
…and characterful wines from 20 local grape varieties:
…"Heroic viticulture" terraced Alpine vineyards that go up to 1200m asl:
Hearty mountain food (the best at Da Nando and Trattoria di Campagna):
…atmospheric castles:
In 30 yrs of travels to Italy, I’d never visited Aosta.
What a stunning place! Only 2 hours from MXP and very recommended for its amazing Alpine vistas:
Yes it was absolutely great
Ischia is bigger than Capri and at least as beautiful but it doesn’t get the cachet. Vertical and volcanic, it historically lived off its wine, and the local food is rabbit rather than fish.
The whites of Biancolella and Forastera ally Medit richness coupled with a Madeira tang.
Best wine shops / wine bars in Aosta?
Another great edition of Be.Come, the disruptive 🇮🇹 wine event that brings together various industries and crafts.
Highlights: Sapaio 2021– red wine of the year so far, Sardinia’s new DOC – Mandrolisai, + great wines from Ischia island (more on this later).
Exciting tasting of Bulgarian 🇧🇬 wines yesterday at Ferment Wine Academy.
The progress this country has made is remarkable. Great value across the range + very contemporary styles, from Burgundian Pamid to sleek, refreshing Mavrud.
🙏 to Dimitar & Donka of Apollo Wine for their help in the selection.
Great to see the 1 and only Elisabetta Foradori in Warsaw after 13 years.
Her wines have changed: sharper, purer, freed from the non-essential, but she has not, hypnotising the audience with her soft-spoken wisdom.
The 2021 Sgarzon Cilindrica (Teroldego aged in two different amphorae) my WOTN.
Sherry Week was properly inaugurated one day in advance 🎉
Consistently one of the most interesting Manzanillas on the market—but very atypical too as it is a vintage sherry, whatever Sean Connery thought about that.
Cheers 🫒
Amazing (as well as otherworldly) to see the Polish wines 🇵🇱 of Kamil Barczentewicz now sold by the UK’s matchless @thewinesociety.bsky.social & garnering great reviews.
#thenextbigthing
