The state of Victoria is an interesting one for the wine enthusiast. Many of Australia’s halo wines come from South Australia – Penfold’s Grange being the most iconic. These are wines of complexity and balance, but also enormous power. And behind them pushes out into the world a commercial tour de force in large-scaled mainstream wine production, marketing and distribution in that fruit-laden style.

The past few days have been a heady, pleasure-filled time for me in Hong Kong. The emotion of exploring the now finished 18,000 sq ft space of Club Bâtard over three floors of the Pedder Building was easily topped by seeing it come to life – the tables set, the woks and pans fired, the mingled scents of Cantonese, French and other favourite dishes, with wine here, and whisky there, filling the high-ceiling rooms, the sounds of music, conversation, and glasses clinking. Boom, Club Bâtard got real.

In Thailand in April, The Fine Wine Experience, local co-hosts Terroir Expression, and Allen Meadows, had the chance to sit down at Villa Frantzen Bangkok as part of this year’s symposium, to go deep on the subject of Richebourg and Romanée-St-Vivant. 

For those of you born or married, etc in 1995, don’t wait until 2025 to buy those 30th anniversary wines. It’s always best to do that the year before.

Looking for a myriad of expressions of terroirs in the Côte de Nuits and good value? Impossible? Nuits-St.- Georges may be your answer,

I love comparisons – glasses in hand – for the chance they give to understand wine more deeply. Whenever we taste wines in verticals (same wine, multiple vintages), or horizontals (same vintage, different examples), the similarities and differences between the wines teach us so much more than we would pick up tasting one wine on its own and relying on memory for reference.

Four elements make a wine – the terroir (base rock, soil, slope, micro-climate combination of the vineyard), the genetic material (old v young vines, grape variety, etc), the humans (grape growing, harvesting, winemaking, ageing and bottling), and the vintage (the weather those 12 months preceding harvest, plus some of what came before).

During last month’s The Fine Wine Experience Burghound Symposium the most popular masterclass was called Premier Cru Vineyards with Grand Cru Potential – a statement, but really posed as a question, for our speaker Allen Meadows, but also for each of us in the room as we tasted through nine examples with the potential for “yes”.

Château Lafleur is amongst my absolute favourite wines. It’s unique amongst Pomerols for its gravelly terroir, its high proportion of old vine Bouchet (ancient genetic Cabernet Franc, massale-selected) and Merlot. For me it is an enigmatic, alluring, shapeshifting wine that invites both patience for long cellaring in bottle, and in the glass over an evening.

Last Monday evening Biondi-Santi’s CEO Giampiero Bertolini joined us at Bâtard for a masterclass to introduce the three latest released wines: 2019 Rosso di Montalcino, 2016 Brunello di Montalcino, 2015 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva

We’ve had the pleasure of Château Lafleur’s Omri Ram being with us in Hong Kong for a few days recently.

There are some things about 1962 that still feel just recognisably modern today – the Beatles had debuted, the Russian and American leaders were in a relations crisis, and Dieter Rams had designed Vistoe’s ‘620’ chair, the same chair that only recently filled Cathay Pacific’s business class lounges.