Grand Vin Wine Merchants UK | Blog

In some ways Port is a most English drink – all tradition, endurance and establishment. Port for me also has the extra allure of all my favourite wines – those improbable offspring of invention and necessity.  It’s also (I feel) a respectable outlet for my ridiculously sweet tooth. This strong, luscious, heady wine is from a most singular and remote place.  Even the most seasoned vineyard visitor gasps at their first sight of the wild, hot, vertiginous Douro.  Most paradoxes are beautiful, and the combination of these stony slopes, with their gloriously unfamiliar vine varieties and a most English sensibility - and names - makes Port one of my favourite wines. Port as we know it was born from the chronic Anglo-French scrapping of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. French imports of pretty much everything, including wine, were banned by Charles II in 1667. England needed a new source of wine. Our old friend Portugal was poised. The two nations had agreed mutually b...

Early reports are of a reduced crop in Champagne in 2012. The changeable and challenging conditions of 2012 (the year that summer forgot) made for significant attacks of mildew, and uneven ripening in the Pinots in particular. Strict selection was essential. Average yields are estimated to be down about 25%. So far, pronouncements on overall quality are circumspect. The attention is on the small crop. You might wonder whether it matters that much. Surely the world is not clamouring for Champagne at the moment. What about the recession? In fact, Champagne exports are rising again, after steep declines in 2008 and 2009. According to figures from the CIVC (the inter professional body for Champagne) 2011 saw the best export figures since the record breaking year of 2007. The rapid growth in desire for Champagne in emerging markets grabs the headlines, and imagination.  At a recent Acker Merril auction in Hong Kong, 47 World record prices were set for Champagnes, of which 12 w...