The Dark Arts

  Pinot Noir is the ultimate Diva of the wine world: alluring, sensual, erotic, complex, temperamental, infuriating, demanding and bewitching. Joel Fleischman of Vanity Fair describes pinot noir as "the most romantic of wines, with...

Of All the Vineyards in All the World

  Billionaire wine magnate, Bernard Magrez is a force to be reckoned with in the world of wine; he is the owner of several dozen vineyards across France, including four Grand Cru Chateaux in Bordeaux. Margrez’s...

A Question of Style – White

  When we talk about wine styles we are talking about the sensory qualities of the wine, we are describing how it looks, smells and tastes. Wines made from different grape varieties across a broad spectrum...

The Little Red Book turns a Lighter Shade of Red

  The Bordeaux wine region annually produces around 800 million bottles of wine per year, almost 90% of which is red wine. By contrast, Burgundy produces approximately 200 million bottles of wine per year, 60%...

Out of the Fog

  When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round you like...

Montesquieu’s Graves

  ‘To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.’ Montesquieu   Graves is the region that established Bordeaux; cultivated grape vines were first planted in its famous gravel soils by the Romans. Graves’...

A Bordeaux Tasting April 2014

  Have spent the past two evenings tasting the latest Bordeaux shipment with Hanoi's finest from the trade and thought I would share some of my highlights here with you.   Bordeaux Tasting Notes Tasted at Warehouse, Hang...

The Song of Teng – Part Two

<!-- _  Song Teng estimates that he cooked under eighteen French chefs during his formative years at the Cambodiana Hotel. Some stayed the full one year term, many left a lot sooner, Cambodia in the 1990's...