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Top-class Piedmont wines from Parusso, welcome to Piedmont’s nobility

"With knowledge and modern technology you can get an elephant to dance ballet". The evening's tasting offered a lot of...

One wine, aged in nine different tanks, a tasting by Domaine Gayda | Per on Forbes

Sometimes people at wine tastings try and impress with opinions like "this wine tastes as if it has been in...

USA is the biggest importer of French oak barrels but the Chinese imports are growing fast

Only 2% of the world’s wines are aged in oak barrels. (Ed.: Only?) But for these 2% quite a few...

The life of a wine region in Jon Wyand’s Four Seasons in Cote Chalonnaise | Per on Forbes

The Cote Chalonnaise is what you could call a "low-key" wine region. There are no famous names. No exorbitantly priced...

Burgundy grand cru: small volume, high prices

The wine world is really not a stronghold of equality. The average export price of a grand cru (red &...

Eight top grower’s champagne producers for the holidays | Britt on Forbes

If you want a champagne that is something special and with extra character it is a good idea to leave...

A pioneer in northern Greece, the Gerovassiliou Winery

One of the largest collections of corkscrews in the world can be found at a must-visit winery in northern Greece....

Swedish wine, can it be anything more than a hobby?

The wine festival for wine “made in Sweden” in Skepparp My wife and I usually go down to Skåne, Scanie,...

Cru Bourgeois will be reintroduced in Médoc

The designation Cru Bourgeois for chateaux has existed in Médoc for many years. Various attempts to rank them, roughly in...

Life as a small wine importer

A true story Systembolaget, the Swedish wine and spirits monopoly, usually boasts its wide range of products, but as is...

This post is also available in: Swedish

Top-class Piedmont wines from Parusso, welcome to Piedmont’s nobility

By Sven-Olof Johansson on November 20, 2019 in Wine Producer Profiles

“With knowledge and modern technology you can get an elephant to dance ballet”. The evening’s tasting offered a lot of new insights, nuances and wonderful metaphors. Among other things, the link between bananas and wine. A trip from two to 30 hectares over five generations in Monforte d’Alba. The last two generations sat at our […]

One wine, aged in nine different tanks, a tasting by Domaine Gayda | Per on Forbes

By Per Karlsson on November 19, 2019 in Winemaking & Viticulture

Sometimes people at wine tastings try and impress with opinions like “this wine tastes as if it has been in an egg-shaped concrete tank”, “this must have been kept in a stainless steel tank”, “you used old oak barrels for this, didn’t you?” and similar things. If you’ve been to a few wine tastings I […]

USA is the biggest importer of French oak barrels but the Chinese imports are growing fast

By Britt Karlsson on November 18, 2019 in News

Only 2% of the world’s wines are aged in oak barrels. (Ed.: Only?) But for these 2% quite a few barrels are needed. France produced 670,000 barrels in 2018, an increase of 2%. 68% of the barrels went on export. The rest stayed in the French wine regions where demand is increasing, in part due […]

The life of a wine region in Jon Wyand’s Four Seasons in Cote Chalonnaise | Per on Forbes

By Per Karlsson on November 17, 2019 in Wine Books

The Cote Chalonnaise is what you could call a “low-key” wine region. There are no famous names. No exorbitantly priced wines (as opposed to other parts of Burgundy). No famous cities. It’s just a normal wine region. This book is exactly a reflection of that. It is a low-key wine book. Four Seasons in Cote […]

Burgundy grand cru: small volume, high prices

By Britt Karlsson on November 14, 2019 in News

The wine world is really not a stronghold of equality. The average export price of a grand cru (red & white) from Burgundy in 2018 was 87 euros per bottle. The red ones are more prestigious and averaged 101 euros per bottle. The whites were “only” at 56 euros. These are prices that most other […]

Eight top grower’s champagne producers for the holidays | Britt on Forbes

By Britt Karlsson on November 13, 2019 in Wine Regions

If you want a champagne that is something special and with extra character it is a good idea to leave the big and famous brands and instead to looking for “grower’s champagnes”. Grower champagne is made by people who own their vineyards and make the wine. The famous “house” champagnes, on the contrary, mainly make […]

A pioneer in northern Greece, the Gerovassiliou Winery

By Marina Mirzabekian on November 12, 2019 in Wine Producer Profiles

One of the largest collections of corkscrews in the world can be found at a must-visit winery in northern Greece. At the Gerovassiliou winery of course! During my journeys of discovering wineries and wines, I was very excited to visit the Gerovassiliou winery. It is very easy to reach via a 20-minute drive from the […]

Swedish wine, can it be anything more than a hobby?

By Carl-Erik Kanne on November 7, 2019 in Wine Regions

The wine festival for wine “made in Sweden” in Skepparp My wife and I usually go down to Skåne, Scanie, the very south of Sweden, at least once a year to visit grandchildren and other relatives. When we planned the trip for the summer of 2019, I noticed that while we were in Skillinge in […]

Cru Bourgeois will be reintroduced in Médoc

By Britt Karlsson on November 6, 2019 in News

The designation Cru Bourgeois for chateaux has existed in Médoc for many years. Various attempts to rank them, roughly in the style of the 1855 classification, have been made since the 1930s. More or less successful. It was previously a (semi-official) classification but is currently a private label. But from 2020, a serious attempt will […]

Life as a small wine importer

By Carl-Magnus Hedin on November 5, 2019 in Debate

A true story Systembolaget, the Swedish wine and spirits monopoly, usually boasts its wide range of products, but as is well known, the majority of all their listed products, especially quality wines, are the result of the work of private importers. Of the approximately 18,000 items the company offers, only about 2,500 are in the […]

World wine production is back to the long-term average in 2019 | Per on Forbes

By Per Karlsson on November 3, 2019 in More

There is no reason to be alarmed even though the world’s production of wine fell with 10% in 2019. The global total of wine is still good, estimated to be 263 million hectolitres. It is a big decline compared to 2018 but on the other hand, it is much more than 2017. In fact, global […]

Champagne bottles that are organic, "bio"

French consumers buy more and more organic wine

By Britt Karlsson on October 29, 2019 in News

Organic wines are becoming more and more popular with French wine consumers. 48% of them would like to see a larger range of organic wines in the stores where they normally buy wine. The fact that the wine is organic is a buying argument for 50% of the young and 38% of the older consumers. […]

Frozen sauvignon blanc from South Africa gives more flavourful wine

By Britt Karlsson on October 28, 2019 in News

There seem to be no limits to the creativity of winemakers. Diemersdal Estate in Durbanhill in South Africa has recently launched its third vintage of its Sauvignon Blanc Winter Ferment. For this wine, the grapes are harvested in February. The grapes are pressed and the juice gets 3 days of skin contact. However, the fermentation […]

A vine suffering from Phylloxera vastatrix

Phylloxera discovered in Washington State

By Britt Karlsson on October 27, 2019 in News

Walla Walla, a well-known wine region in Washington State, was believed to be exempt from the vine louse (phylloxera vastatrix). Therefore, the recent discovery of the louse that is so dangerous to the vines dealt a heavy a blow to the wine producers. All of Washington, and especially Walla Walla, has the kind of sandy […]

South Africa’s vineyard surface declining but revenues are rising

By Britt Karlsson on October 25, 2019 in News

South Africa’s vine surface has declined since 2009 when it was just over 102,000 hectares to today’s 93,000 hectares (table grapes not included). However, wine’s contribution to the country’s GDP has steadily increased during these years. The wine industry is important for the economy, not least in the Western Cape (around Cape Town), where most […]

Le Serre Nuove dell' Ornellaia, Bolgheri, Tuscany

Le Serre Nuove dell’ Ornellaia, the second wine, takes first place

By Sven-Olof Johansson on October 23, 2019 in Wine Producer Profiles

A vertical tasting from 1998 to 2017 The headline might perhaps raise a few hackles. At the top of the pyramid there is, or at least should be, indisputably the most nuances, opulence and structure, in the most expensive bottle. One can, of course, not entirely deny this although I guess many of us might […]

Wine producers’ difficult choices among the wealth of pesticides

By Britt Karlsson on October 22, 2019 in News

Wine producers are facing difficult choices today. Not least in what way they should manage the vineyard. Conventional, sustainable, organic or biodynamic? They have a variety of pesticides to choose from. More if they grow conventionally, less if they are organic. However, there are very different opinions about how dangerous these products are (e.g. glyphosate) […]

The right kind of yeast helps to reduce sulphur in wine

By Britt Karlsson on October 19, 2019 in News

A wine’s sulphur content is increasingly scrutinized. Sulphur dioxide is added to the wine as an antioxidant and stabiliser. But its use has diminished, rather drastically I think, in recent decades, in part thanks to better winemaking technology and knowledge. Sometimes you see “no added sulphur” on a label. But you rarely see a wine […]

Vineyards on the Corton hill, Aloxe-Corton, Burgundy

Dry year but good quality in Burgundy

By Britt Karlsson on October 16, 2019 in News

Burgundy winemakers have been fighting the elements this year. Spring frosts, hail, millerandage during flowering and – perhaps most damaging – lack of water. But when the harvest started on August 31 for the crémant wines, the spirits were high. In prestigious Côte d’Or, picking started around 13 September and continued for 10 days in […]

The black schist llicorella soil in Priorato

Delicious wines from Handpicked Wines’ range

By Carl-Erik Kanne on October 14, 2019 in Tastings

Handpicked Wines’ tasting of their range has for several years been one of the more fun events to end summer and a good start to the fall. This year the tasting was held at the company’s own premises on Bondegatan on Söder in Stockholm. Already in the courtyard, we were met with bubbles and food […]

Alberto Tasca d'Almerita, Tenuta Tascante

Tasca d´Almeritas Tenuta Tascante in Sicily makes wines with elegance and style on Etna

By Åsa Johansson on October 11, 2019 in Wine Producer Profiles

The historic estate Tasca d ‘Almerita’s new project at Etna, Tenuta Tascante (read it backwards), is a tribute to finesse and elegance. This new project is on the slopes of Etna. Come with us and discover one of Sicily’s most active wine producers and their new project on the Sicilian volcano. “The challenge is to […]

Grapes dried on the vine due to heat, Champagne

Good quality harvest in Champagne after record-breaking summer

By Britt Karlsson on October 10, 2019 in News

The harvest in Champagne was in full swing when we kicked off our autumn wine tour season with Champagne on September 11. And we mostly saw happy faces. Alexandre Penet at Champagne Penet-Chardonnet in Verzy looked very pleased when he talked about his healthy-looking grapes. Charles Philipponnat at the eponymous small prestige house in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ […]

Chablis 2017 from La Chablisienne

By Sven-Olof Johansson on October 9, 2019 in Wine Producer Profiles

The people’s choice and the rewards for the patient The glasses are close to each other. Not literally in their arrangement on the table, but in style, appearance, viscosity and overall impression. The lowest level is not unexpectedly high, but the fine wines from the slopes north of Chablis have not yet been had the […]

The well-chosen registration number on the Gogu Winery car

Moldova’s emerging small, high-quality wine producers

By Britt Karlsson on October 7, 2019 in Wine Regions

Look beyond the big names and discover the new-wave wineries In recent years a number of small, very quality-minded, wine producers have emerged in Moldova. Some of them started out making wines in their homes, just for their owns consumption. Others worked in bigger wineries and decided to try their luck and start out on […]

How German wines will conquer Scandinavia, Mundus Vini Nordic

By Carl-Magnus Hedin on October 6, 2019 in Tastings

Mundus Vini is one of the world’s most influential wine competitions. It has been running for 18 years and every year around 11,000 different wines participate in the competition. It must be acknowledged that I have always been a bit sceptical of bottles adorned with gold and silver medals, but after sitting in the jury […]

Valtellina presentation with Madeleine Stenwreth and Aldo Rainoldi

Valtellina – in the shadow of Piedmont, the sun is shining

By Sven-Olof Johansson on October 2, 2019 in Wine Regions

I ask my friends about Valtellina. Most shake their heads; some say northern Italy but few make the connection to Lombardy. The talented and well-read smiles and ticks off nebbiolo combined with a comparison to Piedmont. An underdog with serious tannins and an obvious attractiveness to the wine nerds. Filled to last place, the seminar […]

The Silk Route Tasting, Belt & Road Wine and Spirit Competition BRWSC 2019 Great Gold Medal winners

Award winning wines from central China, medals at the BRWSC 2019

By Per Karlsson on October 1, 2019 in News

“China started making good wines in 2015,” Lens Moser, from Austria, said when I met him a few days ago in Yinchuan, in the Gobi desert, in China. He thinks that Ningxia, the autonomous region where this is located, with its almost 40,000 ha of vineyards, is perhaps the most promising region and that is […]

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