A revealing moment came during a recent tasting of the Berkmann Wine Cellars portfolio. Portfolio tastings are usually approached as commercial exercises – opportunities to navigate price points, styles, and market positioning. Yet occasionally they reveal something more interesting: a snapshot of how the intellectual centre of wine is shifting. Across producers from Portugal, Austria,…
There are wine regions that present themselves through prestige. Others – through history. Paso Robles, increasingly, presents itself through explanation. At Wine Paris, the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance did not attempt to position the region through comparison – not Napa, not Bordeaux, not even the broader narrative of “California Cabernet.” Instead, the structure of…
In every mature wine culture, there comes a time when the question shifts from what we drink to how often, how much and why we drink it. The rise of non-alcoholic wine and spirits does not fit the usual trend definition. It is neither aesthetic nor generational branding, nor is it purely health-driven. It is…
There are wine trends that arrive as aesthetic – and then there are trends that arrive because the market finally catches up with a grape’s actual capabilities. Furmint is firmly in the second camp. At the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre London, Caroline Gilby MW and Richard Bampfield MW framed Furmint not as a…
In 2026, the “Judgement of Paris” turns 50. That anniversary is often treated like a victory lap – a neat, cinematic headline: California beats France, history changes, the end. But the real legacy was never the scoreboard. The real legacy was the shock of competence. As the story goes, France tried to dismiss the 1976…