This year, we are expanding our podcast output to include a new ‘Ask Me Anything’ series, in which members of the team will answer your questions.
Please add your questions to this thread and remember to specify if there’s a particular member of the team to whom your question should be directed. As a reminder of our contributors’ many and varied talents, see the team page.
We welcome questions on any wine-related subject – which can include everything from our favourite house champagne to more tangential subjects covering cooking, restaurants, sustainability, education, low/no drinks and more.
The floor is yours!
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Which wine region is in most trouble because of climate change?
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What prevents restaurants without in-house wine expertise from outsourcing their entire wine list to specialized suppliers who can offer a good balance of margin and quality?
I’m referring to mid-end restaurants that offer wine by the bottle. I recently dined at an expensive Italian restaurant that served wine but had no printed list and ended up offering something very generic (yet pretentiously presented).
It seems like a missed opportunity: outsourcing could increase wine sales while maintaining reasonable margins.
Is it that many restaurants already outsource, but in a package deal with general food wholesalers where wine quality isn’t prioritized? Or are there other commercial constraints, like existing agreements with landlords or beverage companies (in the Netherlands many pubs have a brewer as their landlord), that limit their options?
Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it’s something I often wonder about when dining out.
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Thanks @robertstanier and @fmw - great questions. Keep them coming, everyone!
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How about, with a budget of £50-100, favourite bottle for drinking now of each of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo?
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When drinking structured, age-worthy reds 5-15 years after vintage: if the wine isn’t showing well, what’s your advice for determining whether it’s in a closed teenage phase or if it’s on the way down forever? Could this explain the recent low scores in the 2015 Bordeaux tasting?
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How can wine scape the global anti-alcohol campaign and be welcomed to the new generations?
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What can be done about the trend for increasing alcohol %s in wine regions as temperatures increase with global warming? Increasingly, I find I am reluctant to pick out the high alcohol wines in my cellar (esp. CNdPs and Barolos…even some Bdx are 14.5+%) which is a problem as I bought quite a lot in the mid 2010s! Now I gravitate to cooler climate wines but surely this is an issue that wine makers in affected regions must address…if only they could extract it somehow in the same way chapitalisation is sometimes used to boost the alcohol content!
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Being a big fan of aged wines, I have often wondered what factors determine a wine’s ability to develop tertiary flavours. It obviously seems related to ageability - but also not fully. Having a bit of experience with ageing Bordeaux, I have found that some indeed develop beautifully while others seem to simply lose fruitiness without getting anything in return (even though the wine can still be ageable in the sense that it survives for a long period of time in bottle) . I also can’t always predict this process well based on e.g. the price of the wine - I fondly remember the second wine of some unknown (to me) estate’s 2002 vintage just blowing me away in 2016 - while I’ve recently been dissappointed by a 2010 Pauillac GCC. Would be very interested in hearing the team’s thoughts!
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I have recently started using Vinatis as they seem to have a wider selection of wines from the Languedoc than my preferred Wine Society. They deliver quite quickly and I am surprised by how low the duty and shipping charges are. Am I talking rubbish?
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Hi! ”Ask us anything” what an intriguing idea! I’d like to know, what are called the sparkling wines produced in the administrative region of Champagne, but not in AOC Champagne area? Are they always simply «vin de France»? Also, according to your knowledge are there any producers outside the AOC area but within region of Champagne, that produce “vin de France” following AOC Champagne rules?
Thanks!
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The future of wine? Vitis Vinifera? Alternatives?
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Can a “good” wine be made in a “bad” year’?
There are tasting note scores, however it is not always clear if the scoring is relative to other producers in the same given growing year, or absolute.
Perhaps this is a question better answered in a tasting room but it would be interesting to get an expert opinion on “good” vs “bad” years and how this impacts the final product at release and over it’s lifespan.
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Thanks so much for all your questions so far - we have now selected the first questions to record a pilot episode. Please keep them coming!
Is the English wine production industry heading for a crash?
Balance sheets and P&L of most of largest producers show a financial black hole.
We are over producing and unable to sell enough direct to consumer. WineGB has no idea how to control production and chucks out awards like confetti
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What do you look for in a wine to tell you that it will improve with age? I understand that things like tannin, acidity, sugar etc help to preserve wine over time, but what about the interplay of these or other factors give an indication that a wine will transmute into something more than its youthful self?
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A related question. What makes ageable dry white table wine? Jancis had a link to a tasting note search for long ageable white wine in her recent Saturday article. I tried doing one a few months ago for whites with a 15 year lifespan. What I noticed from both was that there were lots of sweet wines (Sauternes, Tokaj, Spatlese and up, etc.); sparkling and chardonnay (including white Burgundy) based wines. Other wines were few and far between: a few dry riesling (mainly Keller), occasional Hermitage or Chateauneuf. Jancis’ search picked up that there were a lot of Spanish wines reviewed by Ferran, with long age dates - which was a surprise to me.
Is less ageable white produced because there is less demand for it than red?
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The pilot episode is here!
Click below to see @SamanthaCole-Johnson and I answer questions from @anniina, @danielspringer_1, @Andrew_Norrie_Athers and @BoscoBaracus.
Future editions will also be released into our audio podcast channel, but this pilot remains video-only for now (and feel free to share the link with anyone who might enjoy it).
All feedback welcome!
The shownotes for this episode are as follows:
• 05:03: ageing (Oxford Companion to Wine) | Jancis Robinson
• 08:10: 2010 Pauillac tasting notes Tasting notes | Jancis Robinson
• 10:58: Château Rayas tasting notes Tasting notes | Jancis Robinson
• 13:55: French Bloom https://www.frenchbloom.com
• 17:45: Deep Roots Coalition https://www.deeprootscoalition.org/
• 25:06: spinning cone: spinning-cone column (Oxford Companion to Wine) | Jancis Robinson
• 25:31: reverse osmosis reverse osmosis (Oxford Companion to Wine) | Jancis Robinson
• 29:31: Chateau Giscours 2008 @ £75 per bottle https://hedonism.co.uk/product/giscours-2008
• 30:25: Domaine de Chevalier Blanc from 2016 @ £99 per bottle Buy Wine Online With UK Delivery – Waud Handford Wines
• 30:39: Domaine de Chevalier Blanc 2022 @ £102 per bottle
2022 Domaine de Chevalier Blanc, Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux
• 31:05: Château de Fargues 2008 @ £185 for 3 bottles
2008 Château de Fargues, Sauternes, Bordeaux
• 31:29: Château Gloria 2015: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/chateaugloria+st+julien+medoc+bordeaux+france/2015/uk/-/nd
• 31:50: Château Cantemerle 2010 @ £55 per bottle https://hedonism.co.uk/product/cantemerle-2010
• 33:16: Fanny Sabre, Clos des Renardes 2020 @ £55 per bottle https://www.buonvino.co.uk/product/beaune-rouge-clos-des-renardes-fanny-sabre/
• 34:16: Sylvain Pataille 2021 Marsannay @ £29 per bottle Domaine Sylvain Pataille, Marsannay Rouge 2021
• 34:30: Sylvain Pataille, La Montagne 2022 Marsannay @ £65 per bottle https://hedonism.co.uk/product/marsannay-la-montagne-sylvain-pataille-2022
• 34:37: Sylvain Pataille: Clos du Roy 2015 Marsannay @ £99.46 per bottle https://www.laywheeler.com/product-detail?id=0315967B
• 35:13: Sam’s Wine of the Week: Domaine Fernand & Laurent Pillot 2020 Volnay: Domaine Fernand & Laurent Pillot 2020 Volnay | Jancis Robinson
• 35:27: Domaine Fernand & Laurent Pillot 2020 Volnay @ £47.95 per bottle 2020 VOLNAY Domaine Fernand & Laurent Pillot: Burgundy Wine
• 35:32: Domaine Fernand & Laurent Pillot 2020 Volnay @ $59 per bottle Vinopolis Wine Shop - Working
• 35:44: Dom Berthaut-Gerbet Fixin: Tasting notes | Jancis Robinson
• 36:17: Etienne Sauzet Puligny-Montrachet: Tasting notes | Jancis Robinson
• 37:35: Giacomo Fenocchio, Villero 2015 Barolo @ £52.50 per bottle 2015 Barolo Villero, Giacomo Fenocchio
• 37:43: Giacomo Fenocchio, Cannubi 2015 Barolo @ £55.00 per bottle 2015 Barolo 'Cannubi' DOCG, Giacomo Fenocchio
• 39:25: Barolo Boys movie Documentary movie BAROLO BOYS (52'), a film for winelovers
• 39:39: E Pira di Chiara Boschis, Cannubi 2020 Barolo @ £82.99 per bottle
Buy E. Pira, Barolo Cannubi Organic, 2020 (Case) - The Fine Wine Company
• 39:59: Marcarini Brunate Barolo: Tasting notes | Jancis Robinson
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Thanks so much for including my question! Great episode guys, hope this moves beyond the pilot phase!
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