Author Simon J Woolf

7 min read

When Michel Chapoutier mentioned in 2011 that he was considering planting a Chasselas vineyard in the UK, some may have thought this was the ultimate insult to “le vin Anglais” - the famously neutral variety is increasingly ostracized in French vineyards, and is so disliked that even when it appears

Best of 2017: Can wine be radical?

4 min read

The world seems to be shaking on its axis as it watches the new administration take a wrecking ball to the US. Not to mention forest fires destroying large tracts of the Chilean vineyard surface, and the rise of worrying post-Brexit extremism and racism all across Europe. And we narrowly missed

Exotic Wine Travel cracks Croatia

3 min read

Books are strange things. In the 21st century, they're curiously out of whack with our demands for immediacy, and fast being replaced by digital equivalents in many settings. Yet they carry a certain gravitas about them, perhaps due to their permanence or even their physical weight - not to mention

Tasting Georgia: An Inspirational Guide to Georgian Wine Culture

4 min read

What is it that fascinates us so much about Georgia? Interest in this small nation nestling under the Caucasus mountains seems to be at an all-time high - in the last month alone, a clutch of three major books on the nation's food and wine hit the shelves. And there

The vexed question of winery tasting fees

3 min read

Perhaps it should be listed under "First world problems", but the issue of how much wineries charge for a tasting is alive and well, as I learned firsthand last weekend. It is, of course, partly cultural. Wineries in most European countries, unlike their American counterparts, have tended historically not to

Dalmatian Rarities

3 min read

I’m a long time fan of Dalmatia, Croatia’s southerly Mediterranean paradise. It was the first part of the country I ever visited, back in 2003 when the scars of civil war were much closer to the surface than they are now. Arguably the most strongly differentiated part of the nation,

Alice Bonaccorsi's extraordinary 18th century terraced vineyards (Photo Simon Woolf)

Return to the Volcano

4 min read

Almost five years ago, I visited Mount Etna for the first time. Back in 2012, it already seemed like the world's most famous volcanic wine region was exploding in terms of global interest, having transitioned from near abandonment in the 1980s to 60 serious producers. But that was only the beginning.

Burgundy: Hearts or Minds?