The Week in Wine

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Don enjoys a Yarra Valley Pinot Noir while Olly has a delicious unoaked Pinot from Central Otago. 

The week's big news story was the major, government-subsidized vine-pull in Australia, with winegrowers moving into other crops or even just selling vineyard land for development. The story received a lot of interest, particularly from the US.

Our roundup of the Best Spanish wines of 2026 contained a lot of familiar labels, although we learned that Vega-Sicilia (surely, a shoe-in?) only missed out on inclusion by the narrowest of margins. Fair call or egregious error?

Other top reads included a piece on selling wine to Gen Z, although both Olly and Don bemoaned the trend among marketing bods to reduce sales to these lumpen cohorts. The news that Rafael Nadal was launching his own label also kept readers' interest over the week, although Don's personal favorite was the revelation that Champagne had definitively shelved its vineyard expansion plans (on the table since the late 1990s).

The top news roundup of stories missed last week included: the sale of Château Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarosse going back into the courts with incredible tales of insider gossip, political maneuvering, back-stabbing and internecine rivalries; there was also the tale of a Burgundian domaine adopting an AI wine batch-monitoring system (which prompted a number of questions, including whether the "vigneron" image of Burgundy was best-served by adopting AI technology to make wine); the Hospices de Beaune announced its 166th auction of 2026 wines would be significantly impacted, volume-wise, by the hot growing season; Vinho Verde had developed an AI wine label-checker to speed up response times for label approval; and the news that Rioja was set to produce 30 million liters of surplus wine this year.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don has an Impressionist approach to his wines over the weekend but asks if Syrah/Shiraz is the GOAT (Greatest of all Time) grape variety.

This week, we look at Australia's best wines and ask if Rutherglen Muscat should be on the shortlist. The US Supreme Court declines to rule on the Ohio interstate shipping case (so it's situation normal for the three-tier system there). The World's Best Sauvignon Blancs are still attraction attention, as is a piece on Generation Z being the best people to sell wines to...Generation Z. Olly also asks if Gewurztraminer is getting fair representation, generally, and Don wonders if there isn't a little snobbery when it comes to sweet wines.

We also look at Wine-Searcher teaming up with beer/drinks app Untappd.

This week, though, the big news in Spain was the El Tenista cuvée by sports star Rafael Nadal in conjunction with Bodegas Juan Gil; Steve Smith MW's series of tastings in which New Zealand Chardonnays proved they can mix it with Burgundy's best; nearly €2 million in assets are seized as part of an investigation into 68,000 liters of Languedoc red being passed off as Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines; a disgraced Romanian prince gets critical approval for he and his partner's red wine; the Mendoza stock exchange hosts its annual design-a-wine-label competition; a major Cognac house goes into a form of administration while it seeks to reorganise debts of €60 million; and China hosts the "UN of wine", the OIV.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don buys a case of Teluri Saperavi off the back of a bottle enjoyed over the weekend while Olly lauds a delicious bottle of Les Cocalières blanc from Montpeyroux's Domaine d'Aupilhac (although Don does question the sanctity of Vermentino as a great white grape variety). There's also a discussion as to whether you can really turn around on your appreciation of the likes of reductive Chardonnay.

The big news (late) last week was the €5 million heist of Solaia, Guado al Tasso and Tignanello from the Antiori cellars in Cortona. As we discuss, this is almost the identical modus operandi of two previous thefts (from the Conterno Fantino winery in Monforte d'Alba in Barolo, as covered last month, and another break-in at the Banfi winery in Strevi back in June.

But our top headline last week was the World's Best Sauvignon Blancs which, alongside a few familiar names (think Dagueneau and Château Margaux's Pavillon Blanc), saw Austria place across half of the list. Olly asks if New Zealand missed a trick by not pushing top cuvées and more expensive labels harder?

Other stories covered include the Best Bourbons of 2026 and the sad battle in Australia as growers contemplate moving away from the vine. There's also news that a small harvest in California will be well received in many quarters.

This week also saw a misleading headline about Adele refashioning a livestock truck and turning it into a mobile wine shop – it turns out it was the wrong Adele – while the major headline was that roughly 80 predominantly undocumented workers in Burgundy had been left unpaid after a falling out between viticultural contractors.

Slovenia tops a European wine holiday destination list (Don also remains determined to visit a prior winner – Plovdiv in Bulgaria – if only for the raptures the country's Cabernet Sauvignon provoked in him some time ago). There's Polar Chablis up for auction and a Moet-Hennessy/UC Davis collaboration in Champagne looking at detecting wine faults using unique technology that might just be a game changer (it's current focus is Fresh Mushroom Aroma, but it could well be rolled out to other wine faults). Also, cork-maker Amorim has developed a means to print the Marianne (the French tax duty stamp) directly on a cork and Argentina's exports surge... 

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don enjoys an attractively priced and very drinkable Vin de France Gamay while Olly enthuses about a similarly-priced Frusinate IGT (Lazio) biodynamic red called Volumnia.

As it's the start of the month, we look over September's stories and find a big showing from Napa and wider California, from wine industry fears, grumbles, good news and bad – it's all been covered by our US editor W. Blake Grey, with Olly pointing out that Blake is one of the few very regular wine writers covering the California (even US) beat with any great regularity. We also take a moment to look at the way wine writing is going, from influencers and Instagram to wine journalism. Can we get mad at so-called "influencers" when much of wine writing is pay-for-play by another name?

Last week's big stories included the world's best Bourbons (which hit a number of classic names) as well as a deep-dive on the pricing effects seen by Pomerol's Château Lafleur after it left the appellation to become a Vin de France. There was also a scientific deep-dive into the latest research combatting smoke taint in wines and research from Australia hinting that one of the smoke compounds could be ingested by a particular bacteria.

 This week, though, it was the news that the red wines of Burgundy had finally been pulled into the wake of the global red wine downturn with additional suggestions that the Premier and Grand Cru wines are also feeling the pain.

Still in France and bigwigs in Bordeaux have re-ignited the irrigation debate while news from Sauternes indicates the 2026 harvest is not looking good.

In Spain, there was news that global superstar Shakira drank a 200 year-old wine by pipette at a flamenco restaurant and bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey opened a 2015 Vega Sicilia Valbuena 5 with his folks, all in Spanish capital Madrid. In central Spain, bitter winery rivals García-Carrión and Félix Sólis were in court with the former emerging victorious in a spat over who produced the most-loved Valdepeñas Reserva...

Finally, we looked at a €3 million AI advertising campaign unveiled by a major Champagne producers' group.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don is nonplussed by a "smug" New Zealand Pinot Noir [name withheld] while Olly enjoys a Saumur blanc (L'Insolite) from Loire guru Thierry Germain.

This week saw a lot of people reading the latest on grumblings against the Napa Valley Vintners organization – to which we asked how different this was from any gripes and grumbles against over-arching wine bodies globally. Other popular headlines included the news that the historic Gundlach Bundschu winery had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

But we asked if it really was all bad news here (not least with the acquisition of Artesa winery by the irrepressible Jean-Charles Boisset) and also took a moment to admire just how sanguine Rob McMillan, from Silicon Valley Bank, is when talking about the wine industry.

The Most Expensive Italian wines was also headliner that impressed, not least due to the fact that it appears top Italian wines keep going up in price.

But the unsung news this week was that acclaimed Technical Death Metal band Gojira was launching its own range of wines and there was a 3000-bottle heist in the heart of Barolo that had Don and Olly wondering just how much Barolo you might drink at an organized crime Christmas gathering.

Segonzac's Cognac subsidiary has been ordered to honor its grape contracts; Rémy Cointreau is hosting a year-long Robert Doisneau exhibition of unseen photographs of Cognac in the 1960s; the Valle del Guadalupe wine region brings in a billion dollars for the Mexican economy while Mexican wine struggles against European imports; and finally, there's a to-do in the Canary Islands about a Rioja wine labeled "guachinche" causing a stir.

We round off with a look at forthcoming stories on smoke taint, Château Lafleur's pricing issues outside of the Pomerol appellation, the future of Australia and the most expensive wines of the year.

Lastly, Olly and Don wonder if we're not going to see a flurry of special cuvées from top estates coming out of Bordeaux in the 2026 vintage...

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don has a bottle of 19 Crimes and talks about the appeal of fruity, red blends while Olly enjoys a bag-in-box 2024 Bourgogne Chardonnay from The Wine Society (as recommended by Julia Harding MW at the recent Aotearoa Chardonnay Symposium).

This week, we kick-off by talking about two stories that haven't featured on the website: the recent AI wine writing storm kicked off by the 67 Pall Mall wine communicator awards (Olly thinks most wine writers are looking in the wrong direction); and the latest news from Australia that popular wine company Mac Forbes is going into administration (and the quite public social media posts made by some of the vineyards the company owed money to that were put online prior to the announcement).

There's also talk of Gallo's old, small pet project Monte Rosso; Donelan's resurrection of the Obsidian Vineyard in Sonoma County's Knights Valley; more on the Champagne alcohol levels and the harvest; and Wine-Searcher's Retailer Awards is also hitting a note with readers.

This week, Olly looks at Bordeaux's early summer being compared to Jerez and Puglia, climate-wise, and there's also a spat brewing between the Graves and Pessac-Léognan appellations over the latter's attempt to lower its vine density (sounds relatively uninteresting, but it is bringing up old grudges).

There's also further proof that the vine was introduced to Spain by the Phoenicians - not the Romans - and the Balzac museum in Paris is set to run wine-themed exhibition of the great writer and his link to wine. Lastly, we look at Puglia's regional bigwigs declaring the region's wine production is in crisis.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don drinks a Taylors South Australian Merlot and Olly has a saline Aard Chardonnay.

Michelin's Bordeaux ratings fail to cause a major stir while Napa's visitor tasting woes continue to dominate the stats. Our Most Expensive Champagne Top 10 is also a good performer but, we ask, is it the cost of living crisis that means our 'Best Value' series nowadays performs considerably better than our 'Most Expensive' when it comes to grabbing readers' attention?

New Zealand's top Chardonnay producer Kumeu River also makes headlines with a look at what they're up to (including a slight shift in production to Hawke's Bay). Talking of Hawke's Bay, there are more winery woes there as another winery bites the dust; and Italian Chardonnay proves a hit with the readers, as does the "US Booze War".

This week we also look at: changes to Champagne alcohol levels; a winemaker on an Israeli settlement in the West Bank says the UK, French and Canadian ban on settlement products has only increased his resolve to stay on; Lanson sees H1 income drop 80%; Vin et Hip-Hop unveils its Burgundy roster; French harvest smallest in 30 years; Prosecco likely to drop in volume too this year; Rioja cancels wine festival at the last minute; and another Argentinian winery is in financial trouble.

We also round off with a look at what's new on the wine-searcher website.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don gets a case of birthday wines, covering a range of top New Zealand Chardonnays while Olly enjoys a Saumur-Champigny from Thierry Germain.

This week's top stories feature two (well, three if you count or Most Expensive Zinfandel Top 10!) Californians: the struggling category of sit-down Napa wine tastings and Gavin Newsom's Plumpjack winery being the only winery to get compensation for the Pickett fire in 2025.

We also go back to the 80s: shoulderpads, double-breasted jackets with rolled sleeves, the threat of nuclear war, and Chenin Blanc. A number of eyes are also on the latest Jane Anson interview (by Suzanne Mustacich) with Florence Cathiard of Château Smith Haut-Lafitte.

This week, we look at the news that many younger drinkers prefer to use AI tools like ChatGPT to get wine recommendations rather than consult a sommelier; a new study finds early-harvest Chardonnay is "more susceptible" to oxidation; a cocaine haul is found in sparkling wine truck passing through Burgundy; a 17-year-old boy has died and a number of harvesters have been injured across two major accidents involving harvesters in Beaujolais and Alsace; a 400-page novel, partly inspired by the Rudi Kurniawan fake wine scandal, but primarily focused on the world of wine, has been published in France; French, Italian and Spanish wine exports to the USA fell by a quarter in value in the first half of 2026; and the Gastronomic Village operation of Dijon's Cité de la Gastronomie et du Vin wine and food cultural center has gone into administration.

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don sips a triple-aged Jameson while Olly muses on hops and beer. This week we look over a number of early wine harvest stories from the month and Don asks whether or not life might be like toilet paper. There is also a musing on the apparently mediocre reception of Mosel Riesling.

This week: Cava growers struggle to find good prices for their grapes; Sazerac faces a lawsuit in France after growers find their contracts abruptly cancelled; Alsace looks to reduce its vineyard coverage; Argentina's bulk wine exports surge, but prices and trends appear much less positive; and northern Italy experiences an early, hot harvest, with some growers having similar issues to those in Cava.

Meanwhile, police in the Rheingau issue a remarkably understated press release regarding the recent Rheingau Wine Fair, and a restaurant near Mendoza becomes the latest to host a wine and sexuality dinner. We also look forward to an interesting story on the payouts (or should that be 'payout') in the 2025 Pickett Fires in California and a Chenin revival. There's also a tale of Napoleon bringing Chardonnay to Italy...

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]

Send us Fan Mail

Don returns from the UK and Ireland where he wonders if pub-goers might not be better off going to a wine bar and sharing a bottle of wine, given the price of a beer in the capital. Notable mentions on Don's travels include The Winemakers' Club in London and Green Acres in Wexford, among others. A bottle of Nosiola, some great pints of Guinness and a Beaune Premier Cru white are the stars of the last seven and a bit days.

Onto wine news and, a sudden spike in US interest in Baijiu aside, the last week has almost entirely been about early harvests across Europe, from Burgundy to Bordeaux, Alsace to Champagne and beyond.

There's more on the early Bordeaux harvest (where some estates have started picking red wines); a farewell to Rioja's Benjamin Romeo; a Bordeaux wildfire victim is given hope by a Facebook appeal; a wine cooperative in Rias Baixas aims to go fully digital; and a young winery in Ribeiro produces a solar eclipse wine.

There's also more to look forward to this week, with the latest on the US/Canada trade spat just coming out and we rub our hands with gleeful expectation of the Top 10 Most Expensive Bourbons...

ABOUT THE WEEK IN WINE

The Week in Wine goes out every Monday morning so that you can turn up to work with great talking points from the latest news across the world of wine.

Hosted by wine-searcher editor Don Kavanagh with wine writer Olly Styles – who also produces the podcast – nearly all of the stories we discuss can be found on https://www.wine-searcher.com/magazine

You can get in touch with us at [email protected]