The Week in Wine

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Don opens rosé as a crowd pleaser to some dogged palates while Olly opens a De Moor Chablis for a mate. The most-wanted Tequilas tops our news stats this week while California hogs the rest of the limelight. Don looks at the latest out of Napa Valley where vineyards are getting tricky to shift and Cabernet Sauvignon may be on the way out. Talking of which, we look at a story covering the rise of white wine and ask if white varieties might be a good substitute? Also, Randall Grahm's state-of-the-nation piece continues to get eyeballs. As for the latest news, it's over to Bordeaux where a major local wine merchant has suggests the region "got lazy" while US wine critic Robert Parker was dominating the headlines and did not do enough to promote its wines independently of the Maryland-based guru; a bureaucratic hiccup stops non-alcoholic wine production in Italy; Castel launches its own Champagne brand with an interesting choice of name given the very public spat between the company's family heirs and the CEO; a former wine shop employee is charged with stealing €200,000 of wine; Madiran launches its new "Bleu Tannat" young, fresh, red wine brand; there's more woe for Dijon's Cité de la Gastronomie et du Vin wine center; and a new Papal cuvée is one for the émigrés...

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 delicious Gamay while Olly has a Sauvignon Blanc from Italy and a fantastic Saumur rouge which leads to a confession about Cabernet Franc. We kick off quite a long list of bad news with Napa Cabernet and a recent article claiming that the number of Napa wineries will need to shrink. We also wonder if Napa Cabernet has changed in style? Are they all the same/are they still the same? And just how hard it is to find out. Don also talks about a recent piece penned by the great Randall Grahm – also looking at the California wine industry. There's also a nice aside on furry friends in the vineyards. Olly looks at Familia Torres its debt restructure (as well as recent attempts by Bodegas Faustino and Cordoníu to change ownership); more on the frost in Champagne; Rémy Cointreau's proposed rejig; domestic consumption is still on the slide in Argentina; and more on the H&A barrel company in financial straits. Olly and Don daydream about an invite to the Saumur wine and book festival (Les Journées Nationales du Livre et du Vin) and how that might go down while we look forward to extended Bordeaux 2025 En Primeur coverage and Barolo 2022.

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 finds contentment in two very different places: Martinborough Pinot Noir and Jim Barry Cabernet Sauvignon (and Shiraz). Olly has a magnum of Côte du Puy and a Dauvissat Chablis. Against the backdrop of a bottle of 1945 Romanée-Conti going for over $800,000, the last week saw readers looking into the US study that high by-the-glass wine prices are pushing diners away from wine to cocktails and other beverages; the 50th anniversary of the Judgement of Paris sees US wines do well again; the most-wanted Tuscan wines is an all-red affair; and we look at the first in a series on South African wines. Olly has some news from Krug regarding last week's rumor that a third clos label is on the way, but the big news is the number of Russian oligarchs with vineyard holdings in Tuscany and wider north Italy. Champagne gets hit with frost and a French entrepreneur has a novel idea for a commercial blind wine tasting setup (including buying a bottle of wine partly covered by a box and using an app to run the tasting – which can be competitive). There's a podcast exclusive over the latest on Bordeaux barrel-hire firm H&A's financial woes (and the wider impact on the wine industry) and, still in Bordeaux, Don looks forward to our En Primeur barrel tasting coverage. Our Most Wanted series also starts to ramp-up.

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 weekend of barbeque wines while Olly asks low-end Pinot Noir winemakers to stop trying to make a wine that Pinot Noir isn't – and asks for recommendations for enjoyable, cheap, honest Pinot Noir outside of his usual region of Marlborough, New Zealand! We face the possibility that more than one person might be listening to us and Don runs down the top wine stories of the last seven days, including: the passing of global wine consultant Michel Rolland; Tanzania, the Codex Alimentarius, Russia and the continued workings of the neo-prohibitionist movement; the now-troubled legacy of Californian union boss César Chavez (and whether wine publications should stop lionizing people); and did it all start going downhill after David Bowie died? Olly looks at the Brown-Forman and Pernod merger talks, the 600 year-old Pinot Noir seed in a toilet; a third "Clos" label on the cards for Krug; France gets hit by frost; Catholic natural wine served at mass in Monaco; the Middle East conflict worries Mendoza winemakers; the 40th anniversary of the Godello revival; the Revue du Vin de France gives its verdict on the best 'universal' wine glass (and what is the word for being prejudiced against stemless wine glasses – please write in and let us know?); and the Bordeaux barrel hire firm going into administration. Olly gets pessimistic about the wine world but we have En Primeur coverage and a fantastic piece by Randall Grahm to look forward to in the near future.

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

The Hawke's Bay harvest is looking excellent (so far!), while Don is disappointed by a recent Mondavi Cabernet and Olly regrets a lager. The biggest story of the last seven days is that of California's much-reduced grape harvest while our Most Wanted Rieslings list also enjoyed the attention of our readers. Don waxes lyrical about Margaret Rand's piece on Pingus winemaker Peter Sisseck going into Sherry while the biggest news from the end of last week was clearly the passing of Bordeaux blending genius, Michel Rolland. Meanwhile, AP covers the shocking decline of Argentinian wine consumption and Château Pique-Caillou, with a new owner (a textile magnate who is also the director of the local rugby team) and plans for extensive renovation, is tipped to enter the positive babble among wine critics at Bordeaux's En Primeur within the next few years. We look at IGT Toscana allowing Méthode Traditionnelle and Charmat sparkling wines for the first time while grumblings around crisis distillation and grubbing-up continue in Bordeaux. Organic wine estates continue to fall in number in the Beaujolais; Le Figaro profiles two artists who paint with wine; and the ongoing debate over how to label wine made in Israeli settlements spillls over into Canada. Our listener gets in touch and Don is tantalisingly reticent about the wine stories on their way this week.

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 prepares for St Patrick's Day by limbering up with Guinness while Olly drinks a delicious 2020 Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru from Etienne Sauzet. The Most Wanted  Chardonnays and the Most Wanted New Zealand wines top the reader statistics while Don's story on the rise of Bordeaux wine searches in the last 12 months has him asking if the wine industry isn't seeing some green shoots of recovery. Wine fraud in Italy also makes an appearance, but our Most Wanted Absinthes story draws an angry response from the Académie d'Absomphe, which decries some of our users' choices and has Don and Olly ask if the image of absinthe can be rehabilitated and if there are perhaps better ways of going about said revival. Olly talks Snoop Dogg and Tupac; the Iran conflict threatens to hit glass bottle prices in France; a Rioja winemaker (who has made wine for the Pope) lashes out at his governments' position against US intervention in the Middle East; a Spanish news outlet works out which wine bottle Leonardo DiCaprio's character in One Battle After Another is drinking from in the film's final scene; the EU approves changes to the Tokaji wine production code; and NTM rapper Joey Starr talks Rum. Don leaves with exhortations to try (Carlow Brewing Company's) O'Hara's Irish Stout and we consider a story on the California grape harvest being the lowest since 1994.

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 wine as beverage this weekend while Olly has a Langhe bianco that was delicious, but from an unusual combination of grapes. The Most-Wanted Chardonnays tops the readers' favourite articles this week with Don also enjoying a story about how wine is helping the US on the global diplomacy front. Olly talks about his article in which he asks if certain aspects of winemaking in the former USSR (and Warsaw Pact countries) was bad, are those same aspects of winemaking bad today? The weekly wine news rundown includes Henkell-Freixenet taking over Freixenet; labor exploitation ruling in Champagne; a huge fraud swoop in Italy which nabs 2.5 million liters of fraudulently labeled wine; French soccer star Kylian Mbappé is accused of having a glass of wine in Paris while his teammates lose at home in Madrid; the wines of the Cru Bourgeois get a new anti-fraud back-label and Zuccardi inaugurates a new natural wine winery. Don looks forward to a most-wanted article on Absinthe and (impatiently) waits for a new piece on winegrowing from the Rhône Ranger himself: Randall Grahm.

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 100-point wine and we have a look at the implications therein, including asking if we will ever see the likes of Robert Parker's influence in the wine world again. The news that Piedmont is facing crisis dominates readership figures for the second week in a row, while US Editor Blake Gray's coverage of the Premiere Napa Valley auction (which Gray says "the downturn has come for Napa wines") also brings in the readers. Other stories covered this week include the continued saga of Trump administration wine tariffs (and an interesting aside from the makers of Cards Against Humanity), the possibility that the no-alcohol wine craze may be something of a bubble, and the continued popularity of a story on UK sparkling wine – particularly among our...UK readers. Olly looks at the EU announcing aid for France's crisis distillation project, the passing of NZ-based winemaker CP Lin, the proposal for a Languedoc Cité du Vin tourist wine venue in Carcassonne, Australian winemaker Jane Eyre takes the reins at Comte Armand in Pommard, Spain announces its fourth year of yield reduction, Slow Wine demands an end to labor exploitation in the vineyards, and positives and negatives for Rioja in export and domestic sales stats.

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

Unpretentious rosé and wines, nominally for aging, drunk too early. Don and Olly discuss the latest US Supreme Court ruling on tariffs (and what - if anything - this means for the wine trade). The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti tasting story keeps running while Don runs down some of the latest stories including the revival of the "new Old World" of Central Europe; how sommelliers' questions are changing; and the ever-growing critical appraisal surrounding UK sparkling wines. Olly looks at the news that Piedmont is hitting a crisis point; as is Swiss viticulture; and growers facing ever more difficult times in Cognac. We look at Chile's Concha Y Toro withdrawing wines from the Japanese market (over trace amounts of copper) and discuss Montpeyroux's accession to AOC status. There are more glassmaker closures in Europe. On a more positive note, Wine-Searcher PRO members have the chance to enter a giveaway for a special online wine course...

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 delicious McLaren Vale Shiraz while Olly has a lovely 'Carignane' from Lodi. Don talks Napa Merlot, RTDs taking over the drinks space, an oversupply of agave in Tequila and the latest from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti tastings. Olly asks if there are positives to untended vineyards in wine regions (keeping bird pressure down?) and Don looks at Spanish wines – particularly whites – pushing into the USA. This week's wine news includes the revelation that Rhône wines are creating a pan-regional sparkling wine brand to produce bubbles under; there were a number of stories from the Wine Paris 2026 trade show, including cameos from former basketballer Tony Parker and singer Carla Bruni (leading Olly to question the value of celebrity wines/endorsements); wine/alcohol as a leading source of lead exposure in adult diets in France (after, it must be said, refined breads and alongside the likes of tapwater); China threatens France with trade tariffs on wine; Chilean wines experiencing growth in the Russian market; Chihuahua's bid for IGP/PGI status (and the state's signature drink, Sotol); and, finally, Bordeaux winemaker Olivier Bernard on his view that, in five years' time, wine will be in an undersupply situation...

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]