Doing anything only out of passion for one's art has an inherent nobility, especially when it's done in the teeth of adversity. In the world of wine Chateau Musar makes an excellent exemplar of this. More>>

A lot has been written over the years about the Irish flight to Bordeaux. Young bloods from aristocratic families that ended up leaving their names across the board of the drinks business: the negociants Bartons of Barton and Guestier, Richard Hennessy in Cognac, the Bartons of Langoa and Leoville and the Chateaux names like Lynch, Palmer, Kirwan, Boyd and O'Brien. More>>

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Two things have been nagging at me ever since I discovered the delights of shopping in the Lidl supermarket in Arklow. It costs so much less than other supermarket chains that you can't help but wonder how big a margin the other multiples work on. Good and cheap olive oil, passata, tinned fish - but I digress, this column is about wine. So there it is on the wine shelves, Lambrusco Rose at €2.49 a bottle. Which brings me to the first of my unsolved mysteries. More>>

Chianti is probably Italy's best-known wine. There was a time, not so long ago, that the wicker-covered 'fiasco' was ubiquitous - every Italian restaurant put one on every table as a candle holder. As anyone who ever tried some of this can attest, the liquid in those bottles was a very variable thing. More>>

The first known vintage in Chile was that of Don Francisco Aguirre, who had planted his vineyard some 800 kilometres north of Santiago. The grapes, like most of those first arrivals in South America, almost certainly came from the Catholic church, through the hands of Father Francisco de Carabantes. More>>

In Ireland there are three main outlets for wine; restaurants, off-licences and supermarkets. Most people buy their wines in the second two of these outlets either by recognising a label that previously drank well, or by asking for help from whoever's behind the counter in the offy. More>>

Christmas is fast approaching, and soon there'll be that annual mad rush to buy presents accompanied by the dawning realisation that you really haven't a clue what you should be buying. I have friends that love wine, but buying them a wine that is exactly what they'd like isn't very easy. More>>

As we drove through the mediaeval town of Pons, past its fast-flowing rivers and statuary commemorating the pilgrims who travelled through here on the way to Santiago de Compostela, a road-sign with 'Cognac' on it made an appearance. We were getting close at last. We'd come to Cognac to see the process that produces the drink of that name and lunch was to be at Hennessy's headquarters on the banks of the Charente River. More>>

In the first article on Cognac I was talking about how Cognac is made from blending several eaux de vie together to produce a consistency of taste. The actual process of how this happens is a fascinating one and one, I discovered, that needs a very skilled palate. More>>

It happens occasionally to all wine-drinkers; you open a bottle and find the wine is 'corked'. It's an unmistakable taste, once you've encountered it, you'll know it the next time. It's a taste that has been variously described as woody or earthy. Wine that is 'corked' has an aroma that matches the taste - that same woodiness comes through in the bouquet. More>>

To decant or not to decant? This question is not a simple one. For good clarets it's common, for Burgundies it's rare and for vintage Port it's a necessity. Decanting accomplishes two things; it aerates a wine, and if the wine has thrown a sediment, it leaves the sediment in the bottle and you have bright, clear wine in the decanter. More>>

It's generally understood that you drink whites cold and reds warm, and broadly speaking that's true. Still, you can enjoy your wines much more if you take a closer look. It's essentially true that the colder you drink a wine the less of its flavours will be apparent. More>>

I often find myself championing the underdog, which for an Italian, who are prone to switch to winning sides whenever possible, is a rare thing. Possibly I've been too long outside the motherland. Even when it comes to wine I find myself championing causes in the same way that others might might swim against the current. More>>

The part of France that wine-lovers know as Bordeaux covers a large area of different countryside, different weather patterns, different soils and differently styled wines. The Medoc, to the north of Bordeaux city, is home to the famous parishes of the very grand clarets; Margaux, St. Estephe, St. Julien and Pauillac are all there. It's a long spit of land with the Atlantic to the west and the river Gironde to the east, running northwards from Bordeaux city. The city makes a convenient break, because almost all the area known as Graves is to the south of the city. More>>

Two days before writing this I was having dinner with a friend who has a fine cellar of wines. He decided that a 'vertical tasting', that's to say several vintages of the same wine, would be a really fun idea. After a while he emerged from his cellar carrying three bottles of Chateau Haut Brion, one of the great wines of Bordeaux and possibly the finest red of the Graves. More>>

Most of the time I'm writing about what's good about wine and trying to pick out wines that have a particular characteristic to delineate a point. But the fact is that wines aren't always good and it's worth having a look at why that should be. More>>

A long time ago in the history of making wine a simple discovery was made; cleanliness made for a better wine. In an old-fashioned cellar that's not easy to achieve; the wind blows particles, insects and airborne bacteria around and taints and infections are hard to avoid. More>>

Drink enough wine and you'll soon discover that wine is subject to faults that affect its taste. The most obvious of these are the bottle taint caused by a faulty cork and oxidisation which turns a white wine to an almost Madeira-like colour. More>>

Between grape and wine lies a process known as vinification. In its simplest form that's no more than allowing the natural yeasts on the skins of the grapes to digest the sugars within the grapes, what we call fermentation. The result is fermented grape juice, an alcoholic beverage known as wine. More>>

What do you expect when you pour yourself a glass of wine? Apart from finding a taste that you like, you no doubt expect the wine, whether red or white, to be clear and bright and be free from extraneous bits. Most of the commercially-driven end of wine-producers have decided that you, the consumer, wants wines that fits the above description, even if obtaining that is to the detriment of the wine. More>>

In both this column and the restaurant column above you may have noticed a preponderance of reviewed wines that are not from France. This isn't some deep-seated case of Gallophobia of mine, it's a price thing. Much as I'd like to sing the praises of Italian wines, I have to admit that France probably produces the world's finest wines. More>>

Much has been written about the marriage of food and wine. It's one that works well, it must do, it's stood the test of centuries and still we enjoy the combination. But there are other combinations, like Guinness and oysters, that work just as well. In countries where there is no indigenous wine culture, other drinks, most commonly beer, take on the role as accompaniment to food. More>>

Not so long ago German wines were commonplace. On every restaurant wine list you could find a Piesporter or a Liebfraumilch and on better lists there were Bernkastelers and Niersteiners. In the blink of an eye that's all changed - where once German wines figured heavily among the whites now it's the wines of Australia and New Zealand that predominate. I'm no market analyst, but a few reasons occur to me as to why this is so. More>>

Traditional German wines are easy to spot on shelves; they're the ones have labels with distinctive print. There's nothing approachable about this kind of labelling; either you know what a trockenbeerenauslese is, or you're left floundering, wondering what a Qualitatswein mit Pradikat might be, or if 'kabinett' and 'spatlese' might mean something useful. More>>

Nowhere is the old adage that vineyards are symbiotic with rivers better evidenced than in Germany. All its major wine-producing areas are in close proximity to rivers. In a land so far north, as far as the vine is concerned, the mitigating effect of a river on frosty air can make the difference between success and failure for the crop. In cuspal areas, like the Saar and Ruwer, the rivers are of critical importance. More>>

The Gewurztraminer grape is one of the most distinctive of grape varieties. The wine that it produces has a pronounced spiciness, from which it takes its name - 'gewurzt' being the German for spicy. The grape itself probably originated in Italy's Northeast in the Trentino area, but its best known home is in France, in the Alsace. More>>

If a hunter-gatherer of a couple of millennia past collected bunches of ripe wild grapes and left them in a container, a wonderful thing happened. As the liquid was pressed out of the grapes by their own weight, the natural yeasts present on the skins began to digest the sugars in the must. More>>

As the world of wine marketing has shifted from a regional emphasis towards a varietal emphasis, there can't be many wine drinkers left who haven't tasted the big four varietals; Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. More>>

Just like with any other process, making wine results in by-products. Our story today concerns one of them. But to begin at the beginning. When you make wine, the first thing you do is crush the grapes - you break the skins and put them into a fermentation vat. More>>