We are now on series 3, and we are filming this week in the Douro Valley. For the first episode we were at Quinta da Gaivosa/Alves de Sousa with Tiago, and we then went to UTAD (the university in Vila Real that has a great wine program) and Niepoort’s Vale Mendiz winery with Daniel. These are some pictures from the road.

Kew is an amazing place, and although I no longer live near it, I have a season ticket. It costs less than the equivalent of two visits for two, and you can bring a guest in with you. No brainer. And they have some great exhibitions, including the current one: the largest ever presentation of outdoor artworks by Moore, titled Monumental Nature. It runs until the end of January 2027.

The Henry Moore exhibition led to two thoughts about wine.

The nature of wine perception

The first: the angle you approach a sculpture from determines, to some extent, how you appreciate it. Viewing from different angles can give you different experiences. Now this sounds kind of obvious, and non-profound, but I think there’s a clear parallel with wine.

When we taste wine we are getting a glimpse of it. We take a sip, we see one thing. We take another, and see something different. Of course, there’s the degree of attention we pay to the wine: interrogating it more thoroughly reveals more of it to us. But there’s another side to this.

I think we are striving to get a wine, when we taste. We don’t get everything; we get bits. Our perception is imprecise. Tasting is a creative act in which we play a role.

John Dilworth, Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University has written on this topic. He has compared what he calls ‘imaginative’ and ‘analytical’ experiences of wine. Most people think of wine appreciation as an analytical activity, where experts carefully distinguish the various sensory qualities of the wine. Dilworth suggests that this quasi-scientific approach is seriously defective. He maintains that to appreciate wine we need imaginative as well as analytical experiences of it. Unlike art appreciation, which also has an imaginative element, Dilworth suggests that wine appreciation has an improvisatory element that is highly individual. This is an interesting point that’s worth exploring further.

Originally, our sensory capabilities evolved because they helped us survive. He thinks that wine tasting has co-opted these faculties in the pursuit of pleasure.

‘Human feelings of delight, attraction and enjoyment initially earned their evolutionary keep as reinforcers of survival-enhancing behaviors. … But once the relevant cognitive and affective mechanisms were in place, they became available for reuse in entertainment, artistic activities and plain – in recreation, in a word.’

Dilworth uses the analogy of the arts. The meaning achieved by the arts is imaginative or representational rather than literal or real. The emotions we feel listening to a powerful piece of music, ‘have no reality independent of the immediate experience of them by a sensitive listener.’ It would be wrong to confuse the experience of music with the sensory configuration of the heard sounds, even though there is no obvious way of linking the two. Likewise, how do you understand abstract art such as Kandinsky or Picasso (in his cubist period)? Dilworth points out that a literal account of the visual content, describing shapes, lines and hues, would be stupid. The sensory qualities of the painting don’t reveal its meaning. But this is exactly what we do with wine. ‘Exactly this kind of gross confusion of exhaustive literal descriptions of sensory qualities with experimental meaning constitutes the ruling orthodoxy in discussions of wine,’ says Dilworth.

He suggests that flavours, aromas and colours of wine can have an imaginative role in appropriately receptive experiences of them. In wine tasting, we typically assume that there’s a two-part process. First we have the analytical part, where we actually perceive what is there. Then we have the bit where we interpret what’s there, and react to it, bringing our stuff into the equation. Dilworth argues that this is wrong: wine tasting is a single, imaginative experience that includes all the flavours and aromas, and their enjoyment. Alcohol also plays a role in this imaginative appreciation, turning a sober sensory experience into one that is less inhibited, where the cognitive system of the drinker is more suggestible, with a wider range of cognitive exploration possible.

But we shouldn’t compare wine appreciation with art appreciation. Dilworth says that a better comparison is with improvisatory theatre. Wine gives us each a sensory theme on which we can carry out art-like improvisations. In this process, we are the artists. Alcohol in the wine helps set us free to do this. One of the implications of this view is that we should do away with absolute ideas of wine quality. People like different wines and some people prefer mass-produced, fruit forward wines. If we consider wine to be the raw material for personal improvisation, this problem is removed. Dilworth states, ‘those who harbour secret admiration for some wines that are out of favour with the critics need no longer feel guilty concerning their tastes.’

Being led by expertise

The second: I have never studied art, I have never studied sculpture, but there is trust involved here. I can have my own experience of the art work, but there is more to the art work than simply my experience as someone with little context or true understanding. It’s a good start, and it is valid, but I have to trust expertise and be willing to be led when I am experiencing something outside my realm of true competence.

Indeed, there is a richness in being led by others who have done the hard yards. Faced with a flight of wines – say for example, a line up of 20 examples from a Burgundy Grand Cru vineyard – I welcome being steered by someone who really knows that vineyard and these wines. Of course, I can tell you what I think about these wines, and with my tasting experience and level of general wine knowledge, there is some value in my opinions beyond simply autobiography. But the deep knowledge of others that far surpasses mine in this respect is a valued resource, and it pays well to learn from true expertise.

And, in particular, the wine list. It’s brilliant. And part of its brilliance is that it is short.

They are sourcing wines from the best sort of supplier, and in the case of the three wines by the glass we chose, Roland Wines and Les Caves de Pyrene, both of who specialise in organically farmed, low intervention wines. Oh, go on, let’s use the word: natural.

But these are carefully chosen, and work with the food here, and aren’t expensive. And they also offer corkage at £33 a bottle.

Some might call this pricey. But it puts off cheapskates. And it makes those of us who might want to bring a special bottle not feel guilty.

What we drank:

Antonio Pedro Toto Barbadillo Espumoso de Albariza 2022 Spain
Fizz from Barbadillo in Sherry country. Palomino and Chardonnay. Fruity and bright and really pure.balanced and delicious. Rounded with cherry and lemon finishing chalky. This is lovely. 90/100 (Supplier Les Caves de Pyrene, £49 per bottle)

Christina Gelber Muskateller 2025 Carnuntum, Austria
From Christina Netzl, this is a lovely friendly orange wine. I tried this with her at VieVinum in May. Skin fermented, five weeks on skins, aged in 500 litre vats. Floral and grapey with nice weight and good structure. Has some pear and table grape fruit. Grippy finish. 92/100 (supplier Roland Wines, £56 per bottle)

Domaine de la Pepière Muscadet de Sevre et Maine Sur Lie 2025 Loire, France
Such a classic Muscadet, showing of Melon at its best. Stony, textured and fruity with green apple and citrus fruit. So lovely. 92/100 (supplier Les Caves de Pyrene, £43 per bottle)

I love this sort of wine list. Things I want to drink, without throwing me into choice paralysis. And the food (which I have written up on wineanorak) is just superb. Will be back!

I was in a vineyard in the Ahr valley, and separated by a path, there were two plots of adjacent vines. One had these small, compact clusters. The other had the clusters pictured below: larger, heavier, with bigger berries.

The first plot: Pinot Noir, Dijon clones. The second, Pinot Noir, German clones.

What is a clone?

Initially, grape vines would have been grown from seed. Each time a vine has sex, it produces seeds, and when these germinate, each is a new variety. Even if you cross Pinot Noir with Pinot Noir, you will get different varieties from each seed that is produced, and it’s likely that few of them will look anything like Pinot Noir.

The reason for sex is to introduce genetic variation as a tool in the war against disease. Think about it: why would we not just reproduce without it? It would be much easier. It’s just that we’d be sitting targets for disease organisms, and it’s the jumbling up of genes during sex that helps avoid this. And that’s worth more than consistency. It turns out that sex also creates the raw material for differential reproductive success, which is the driving force behind evolution. But remember that evolution doesn’t act at the level of the group or the species (this is the fallacy known as group selection), it acts at the level of the individual.

Pinot Noir is an ancient variety, and has some morphological similarities with wild Vitis sylvestris. It was talked about (we think) by Columella. Firm evidence shows that seeds from 600 years ago are genetically identical to modern Pinot Noir. It has a lot of clones, but contrary to some widespread misinformation, this is not because Pinot is genetically unstable, but rather it is ancient and widely grown. We’ll come back to that in a bit.

Pinot Noir has given rise to lots of offspring, and frequently in combination with Gouais Blanc, a white variety. The varieties resulting from this cross are:

Aligote, Aubin vert, Auxerrois, Bachet noir, Beaunoir, Chardonnay, Dameron, Franc noir de la Haute Saöne, Gamay blanc, Gloriod, Gamay noir, Knipperle, Melon, Peurion, Romorantin, Roublot and Sacy.

And in this partnership, they have changed roles as mothers and fathers:

Gouais is the mother for: Aligoté, Auxerrois, Bachet, Chardonnay, Franc noir, Gamay noir, Melon, Romorantin and Sacy.

Pinot is the mother for: Aubin vert, Knipperlé and Roublot.

So, at some stage, perhaps more than 1000 years ago, someone saw a vine that had grown from seed and liked the look of it. They took a few cuttings, and then these became vines in their own right, genetically identical to the first vine. This continued to the point that someone decided to give this variety a name, and we now know it as Pinot Noir, or Spätburgunder, or Pinot Nero, or a whole bunch of other synonyms.

All the Pinot Noir in the world comes from one seedling. Technically, each Pinot Noir vine is a clone, because it is genetically identical to the original Pinot Noir grown from seed.

But in the wine world we confuse things somewhat by referring to clones as a population within a variety that comes from a vine that has been identified as having desirable properties, and then grown up into many plants from this original.

A different approach is massale selection, where genetic diversity that might otherwise be recognized by the selection of clones is allowed to persist, and seen as a strength. When it comes time to plant, then a selection of the best vines (many of them, not just one or two) is made and cuttings are taken. In the era of clonal planting, where entire plots were planted with just one clone, this sort of selection isn’t possible.

What’s the genetics behind clonal variation?

Over a very long time, very rare genetic events suddenly gain significance. These include somatic mutations where there are changes in the sequence of the DNA in various parts of the vine (somatic = the body). The vast majority of these are insignificant, and those that occur in the coding parts of the DNA are mostly deleterious or neutral. But occasionally they create phenotypes (the appearance of the vine) that are visible in some way. That is, these mutations cause effects that can be seen. For this to happen, they usually have to take place in a bud meristem, where the mutation in one cell is then propagated throughout the structure that the bud makes, such as a branch of the vine. This branch might have more grapes, or a different cluster architecture, or might grow in a different way.

But the main forms of clonal variation don’t seem to come from these DNA base pair mutations. Rather, they are either down to transposable elements (jumping genes) or epigenetic changes. This is where things get very complicated fast, and it’s only now with good long-read sequencing technology that the real genetics of clonal variation is beginning to be understood. The sorts of genetic tests that tell one variety from another aren’t sufficient to tell clones apart, and short-read sequencing isn’t good at revealing the structure of the genome, and some of the changes that separate clones. One thing is becoming clear: vines are able to adapt to their environment, and some of this adaptation will be passed on through clonal propagation. They exhibit what is known as phenotypic plasticity.

[I have been reading up on this, and there’s some really good recent research. I think it deserves its own article.]

So let’s get back to Pinot Noir. This phenotypic plasticity is quite pronounced because of the age and popularity of this variety. The danger is that by planting by ‘clone’ we could be losing a lot of the variation (genetic and epigenetic) exhibited in old vineyards. And some of this variation might be invisible, but useful. One approach, taken by Bragato in New Zealand, is to induce phenotypic plasticity artificially in embrogenic callus, and then grow many thousands of different clones and select for desirable features from them. This saves a lot of time, but it’s still an enormous undertaking.

There are some quite famous clones of Pinot Noir that are recognized as separate varieties, namely Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Pinot Meunier.

Pinot Blanc came about with a big deletion in a chromosome that held the anthocyanin-promoting genes. Pinot Gris came about with a deletion of the anthocyanin-promoting genes in one of the two embryonic meristem layers (the one producing the epidermis), so that berry colour is much diluted. And Pinot Meunier came about with a deletion of a gene that responds to the plant hormone gibberellin in the same cell layer, hence it is what is known as a periclinal chimera. So, technically, these are all clones of Pinot Noir. It’s just easiest in practice if we treat them as separate varieties (even if they aren’t).

These were in the same region, and quite close to each other (we were in Erdener Treppchen, Erdener Prälat and Urziger Würtzgarten, mainly), and yet they looked very different. What were the variables? Vine age (some were very old and ungrafted, others younger), trellising (sur echalas or trellised), site on slope and soil type (mostly slate, but Würtzgarten is red sandstone/clay). And then there was some botrytis, too. On camera, I tasted a few grapes from a grafted vine, and an ungrafted vine right next to it. They tasted different! I know, this is a very limited sample, and might be down to vine age or the difference between Riesling’s roots and the roots of the rootstock used, rather than the presence or absence of a graft union. But it’s interesting.

It was great to be involved as overseas judge in the Hunter Valley Wine Show. My previous experience of Australian wine show was back in 2012 when I was one of the two overseas judges (along with James Suckling). This was a national show, judging wines from all over the country. The Hunter Show is a regional one, looking only at Hunter Valley wines.

I like the regional show concept. It brings everyone together, especially for the Friday awards ceremony. And for a visitor like me, it presents an opportunity to do some visiting vineyards and wineries, as well as hanging around with a bunch of locals.

In Australia the show system is an important part of the wine ecosystem, and winemakers are very keen to be show judges. But it’s a long way to the top. Typically, prospective judges will do the Australian Wine Research Institute AWAC (Advance Wine Assessment Course), and then spend time working as wine show stewards, and then apprentices before they land a judging position.

The judging took place over three days, and there were three panels, each led by a panel chair. The show is guided by a chief judge, and they get to taste everything that the panels bring back for consideration for gold medal status..

Altogether, just over 650 wines were entered from 69 producers, and these are all flighted appropriately. Sometimes the flights get big, and they are then split over two panels. A typical flight would be 20 wines, which are all pre-poured.

We then taste, writing down notes and scores on our computers, directly into the show system software. When we finish a flight, we submit our verdicts. And then it’s time to confer.

The panel chair takes us through each wine, but the first stage is to pick what’s called the ‘recalls’. A panel will typically be five people: the chair, two judges and two associates. The associates’ scores don’t count (technically), but chairs will listen to what they have to say. To be recalled, a wine will be one that is thought to be in contention for gold. Rarely will all panel members agree on a wine: it’s quite common to have a wide range of scores. But if there are two golds or more, or one gold and a couple of strong silvers, then the wine will be marked for recall. The pouring team with then select the recalled wines (usually five or six a flight) and repour them in random order, with a letter not a number indicating their identity.

Then we continue through giving final scores to the non-recalled wines. And then we taste the recalls, entering our notes and scores into the system once more.

The system used is very good, and during wine discussions we can see the notes and scores of all the other panelists.

The recall discussion is often a lengthy one. Eventually, gold medals are decided on, with the help of the show chair who joins in this tasting session. Everyone cares about the outcome and wants the best wines to win, and for this to happen you can’t take your score personally. If you thought a wine was gold and no one else did, then you graciously give way. It doesn’t work in the interests of the wine if horse trading happens (I gave you a gold on the last wine, now you should give me a gold on this one).

The interesting thing is this. Given that show judging positions are hotly contested, and the tasters are all competent, why is there so much disagreement among judges when tasting the same wines?

One answer is that Australian judging is largely done by winemakers, and these folk are extremely good technical tasters. If you are making wine, being able to taste forensically is a good thing. If you are judging a wine it can be tricky. This is because the judges are hot on faults, and people differ in their thresholds for many fault compounds. So one judge might pick up the presence of a fault compound in a wine, and be triggered by this. For them, this wine can go no further: it must be eliminated. Others may not pick up that fault compound, or might decide that at a low level this isn’t a problem (this rarely happens in reality). Absolute purity gets rewarded.

One of the judges said to me that if you compared a list of top wines selected by show judging, and a list selected sighted by a wine critic, the latter list would show wines with more personality, but the former would be wines that are absolutely clean and pure.

Day one consisted of 21 Chardonnays from the 2024 vintage followed by 24 Semillons from 2025. Then a flight of 2025 vintage Chardonnays, before a late lunch. In the afternoon, a very important flight: 24 aged Hunter Semillons from 2018 back to 2006. I gave seven golds. This is a remarkable category to judge, because of the quality of the wines entered, and the uniqueness of this style. It was clear that the evolution of many of these wines is glacially slow.

Day two began with a long flight of baby 2026 Semillons, This was followed by some reds: a flight of 2024 Shiraz, another important category for the Hunter Valley. After lunch, we looked at a big flight of aged Hunter Valley Semillons, but these weren’t library releases, just back vintages.

Day three was in two parts. First of all, judging the provenance trophy, where producers pick one wine and enter three vintages of it, with a decent chronological spread. This was just for Semillon and Shiraz.

Then it was trophy judging, which is where the gold medals fight it out for trophies across a broad range of categories.

After the paperwork was signed off, I was able to go round the back and try wines sighted - they had been prepared for the Exhibitors Tasting, the next day, giving those who entered a chance to taste the wines of others. The medal the wine ended up with was indicated on the table.

I tasted widely both on the afternoon of day three and also the Exhibitors Tasting on day 4. This was a great chance to see what’s going on in the Hunter. I’ll be doing full write-ups on wineanorak.

Some links to articles from judging in 2012 at the Melbourne show:

https://www.wineanorak.com/wineblog/uncategorized/judging-at-the-royal-melbourne-wine-show

https://www.wineanorak.com/australia/oldwinedinner.htm

https://www.wineanorak.com/wineblog/australia/a-big-night-out-in-melbourne-with-a-good-feed-and-lovely-wines

I’m here on a press trip with a bunch of lovely folk, and yesterday was our first big day. We tasted some amazing wines, most of them Pinot Noir. This is the dominant grape here in this small region which has 535 hectares of producing vineyards.

Most of the vineyards are on steep slopes, and some of them are on very steep slopes. Predominant soil type is schist, but there’s quite a parcellation of soils here, including a bit of volcanic contribution, and some loams and loess.

Yesterday was mainly a day focusing on tasting, but I did get a few vineyard shots. Today will be about terroir tasting in vineyards, which sounds a lot of fun, plus a couple of winery visits, and a tasting of older wines. Yesterday we tried a 1999 Pinot Noir from one of the cooperatives here and it was incredibly good!

So is wax just pretty, or does it serve a functional role? What does the science say?

The term used here is overcapping, and it’s important to differentiate between this, where wax is used over the top of the bottle neck and the in neck closure, and the wax treatments used on the surface of the cork.

Most of the oxygen transmission with a cork doesn’t come from oxygen moving through the body of the cork, but through the cork/glass interface. This can be shown by using epoxy resin to seal around the top of the cork where it meets the glass (epoxy doesn’t allow oxygen transmission), leaving the rest of the surface of the cork without any covering. This effectively eliminates oxygen transmission.

There have recently been some interesting studies addressing the potential oxygen barrier benefits of overcapping with wax from the group of Thomas Karbowiak at the University of Bourgogne.

“Nonetheless, there are still some winemakers maintaining the tradition of using wax, often in combination with cork-based stoppers, to enhance the overall aesthetics and brand image of a wine. Moreover, there is still a widespread belief that the addition of wax on top of the cork stopper helps to strengthen the seal and adds an additional layer of protection against oxidation of the wine, especially in the case of wines destined to age. This is somehow contradictory with the fact that the most commonly used waxes for sealing wine bottles are selected without taking into consideration their performance as barriers to oxygen. This is a very important parameter since the oxygen performance can vary depending on the type of wax used and its chemical composition.”

Ureña et al 2024

First, they too four different wax coatings and studied the oxygen barrier properties of these coatings alone. Beeswax, shellac and microcrystalline wax all performed similarly, with an oxygen transmission rate of around 8 mg oxygen per year for a cylindrical surface of 18.5 mm, equivalent to the surface of the cork inside a bottle neck. A commercial wax blend that they used performed a lot better, with an OTR some 10 times lower. This is the one they used in the study. They didn’t specify the manufacturer, but state that this is a blend of resins, refined hydrocarbon waxes and polymers.

Then they took natural cork and an agglomerated technical cork, and studied how they performed over a year in a number of settings, with and without wax. The corks were 25 mm x 49 mm, while the microagglomerated corks were 25 mm x 44 mm. They looked over one year storage using 375 ml bottles that had a PreSens chemoluminescent oxygen detector glued into the inside wall.

The first thing to note is that when a closure is inserted into a bottle neck, it is compressed. For most corks, the diameter of the uninserted cork is 25 mm, and this is then compressed to the 18.5 mm diameter of the bottle neck. This compression results in the release of gas (air) in the cork structure, and this outgassing takes 6 months in this study. It’s only after 6 months that you reach a sort of steady-state oxygen transmission level, and this is the bit where we really want to see the impact of any wax overcapping.

The second thing to note is that if the cork isn’t coated with wax before insertion, the oxygen transmission rate is very high. A wax coating (which all corks have, because it reduces the extraction force to a sensible level) eliminates a lot of the cork/glass interface oxygen transmission. This study looked at both treated and untreated corks and microagglomerate corks.

The third thing to note is that if you apply wax immediately after the cork is inserted, the outgassing disrupts the wax seal. But in the experiment where they looked at untreated corks, they had to apply the wax straight after corking because otherwise the glass/cork interface OTR would mask any findings, because it is so high.

So, the findings. The microagglomerates had a low OTR and the wax made no difference to the results.

The corks had a wide variation in OTR, ranging from 0.3 to 56.5 mg of oxygen, a 200-fold difference. But the high level was an outlier of the 9 bottle sample, and you would need a much larger sample size to make firm conclusions because of the natural variability of the cork. But with wax, the rate ranged from 0.3 to 3 mg. This seems to show that it’s having some effect reducing the variability, although with a sample of just 9 bottles we don’t know for sure that any of this set of 9 would have shown higher OTR without the wax.

The conclusion here is that if the closure has a lower permeability than the wax, and has a surface treatment (which all corks do), then the wax is providing a purely cosmetic role.

If the closure has a higher permeability than the wax, then wax may be providing some protection, and lowering the variability found with natural cork.

In a second study, the same group looked at the temperature of the bottleneck during wax application, and found that if the bottle neck was heated to 60-70 °C before waxing, then there was much stronger adhesion leading to higher barrier properties of the wax. If the wax is applied to glass at 25-50 °C, then the oxygen transmission rate is highly variable.

It follows that if you are worried about the variation in cork performance and you want wax to even this variation out, then heat the glass before applying the wax.

References:

María Ureña, Julie Chanut, Vincent Bottreau, Jean-Pierre Bellat, Régis D. Gougeon, Aurélie Lagorce, Thomas Karbowiak 2024 Wine bottle overcapping wax: An aesthetic or functional element? Food Packaging and Shelf Life 46:101367

Julie Chanut, María Ureña, Vincent Bottreau, Agathe Pissis, Jean-Pierre Bellat, Régis D. Gougeon, Aurélie Lagorce, Thomas Karbowiak 2026 Impact of the deposition process on oxygen barrier properties of wine bottle overcapping waxes. Food Packaging and Shelf Life 57:101814

Julie Chanut, Maria Ureña, Vincent Bottreau, Régis D. Gougeon, Jean-Pierre Bellat, Aurélie Lagorce, Thomas Karbowiak 2026 Wine bottle overcapping wax: is it an effective barrier to oxygen or just an aesthetic element? IVES Conference Series, WAC–IVAS 2026

For the benefit of those who’ve newly tuned in to what I do, and also for the benefit of those who’ve been following my work for a while, I thought I’d explain how I use (or plan to use) the various online communication platforms.

First, wineanorak.com. This is my primary online presence, and the domaine was registered in November 1999, although the site has articles back to 1996 on it, when it was a Geocities site. I publish there daily, and it’s often in-detail reports of trips, tastings and occasionally longer-form articles. It is well ranked by Google, and gets a lot of traffic across its many pages. I won’t be duplicating what I do on wineanorak on Substack.

Then Instagram. This is an important and fun communication tool. A lot of my content there is tasting wine on camera. First-take impressions of wines. Well, sometimes second take, if I forget an important name, or something like that.

Then we have Substack, where I plan on publishing different sorts of content to wineanorak. You’ll get a flavour of what’s coming from the articles I’ve already published here. I’m still quite fresh here. I like it.

Then another new medium: TikTok, where I recently started publishing. My focus there is on a Glossary of Wine, which are short, unscripted pieces to camera explaining wine words in simple terms.

And YouTube, where I’ve been for a while. I’ve just started cross-posting the Glossary of Wine videos here as shorts, and I’m going to be doing more long-form educational material here. I think YouTube is going to be more important going forward.

X, formerly Twitter, is somewhere I still exist, but I’m just using this to propagate content. Same goes for Blue Sky, which has never really taken off the way that we’d hoped.

LinkedIn is important. I mainly use it for propagating content, but there’s some good engagement there. After encouraging AI-generating content for so long, LinkedIn have now changed their mind: I think they realised that their platform was being drowned in slop. So there’s hope!

Facebook has its role, albeit a diminished one from the past. But there are some good people who like to engage there, so I’m not giving up on it. My instagram posts get cross-posted here.

August is normally a very quiet month, but I have two trips. Later in the month I’m heading on a press trip to the Ahr Valley in Germany, home to some amazing Pinot Noir, grown on steeply sloped schist-soiled vineyards, followed by the VDP tastings in Weisbaden.

But before that, I’m heading today to Sydney, to judge the Hunter Valley Wine Show. And to save the organizer’s budget, I opted to fly with Emirates. When I booked the tickets, flights via Dubai were significantly cheaper than other options. Foreign Office Travel Advice at the time was not to travel to Dubai, but this has since changed. I thought it might, hence booking the tickets.

But it means I’m flying on an airline I have no status with, in economy. It’s not ideal, but really it’s fine. If I was flying with a One World alliance member, then I’d get priority boarding, lounge access, and tier points going towards securing status for another year (and BA have recently moved the goalposts, so it’s just about impossible for someone like me to retain Gold, and retaining Silver will be a challenge, but really, there are bigger things to worry about).

Some perspective: flying economy is so much better an experience now than it was back in 1996 when I first travelled to Australia, in the back of an Olympic Airlines 747. This is when they still allowed smoking on board planes. It was madness. It was horrible. You had virtually no control over where you sat on the plane. There was very little entertainment (everyone had to watch the same film, which was on small screens interspersed among the cabin).

Back to the title of this piece: checking a bag. Normally I avoid this. I travel really light, and every item in my bag has to earn its place. I also avoid wheelie bags, and just use soft sided bags. Carrying them is good exercise, and I can always get them into the overhead bins, even if I board late.

This time, though, I needed to bring wine to share at the various events around the Hunter Valley Wine Show. I have four bottles, carefully wrapped, and they are going in the hold. It feels really weird to check a bag. The only other time I do it is for filming The Science of Wine, where I need to check a guitar.

And a couple of years ago I checked a small rucksack with three bottles of wine, padded with clothes and shoes, because these bottles were just too good not to bring home (Phelan Farms and Mayacamas). Thankfully, the bottles made their way home safely.

I had one bad checked bag experience, and that was in March 2008 when I went on a press trip to Argentina. You can still find the write up of this trip on wineanorak.com. This was back in the days when some companies had proper budgets, and Terrazas, who sponsored the trip but generously included other wineries, flew us out on British Airways business class. I made the mistake of checking my bag through to Mendoza. At the time, the connection involved trecking across town to another Buenos Aires airport for the domestic leg, and the bag never made it.

I spent a week with no change of underwear, and blagging t shirts from wineries. Halfway through, someone gave me a lift into Mendoza to shop for some fresh underwear. Life saver. But it wasn’t until we got back to the international airport in Buenos Aires that I was able to visit the BA offices and grab my bag, which I found lying in a corner.

This time I have a couple of t shirts and some fresh underwear in my hand luggage. And I see a lot of Semillon in my near future!

The idea? Lighter style reds (the colour is legally limited to 3 -15 ICM Intensité Colorante Modifiée or Modified Color Intensity), with low tannins (limited to 209-55 IPT (Indice de Polyphénols Totaux, or the Total Polyphenol Index), and no oak.

These wines are designed to be served chilled, and from the three examples I tried, producers are labelling them in a way that communicates the nature of these wines. They aren’t supposed to be serious, they are supposed to be fun, and enjoyable.

And another thing. They are allowed to have some residual sugar: up to 7 g/l. This might alarm traditionalists, but have you ever seen the residual sugar levels in commercial red wines? One supermarket in the UK, Waitrose, publishes the rs levels of all the wines in its press tastings. You’d be amazed at how many supermarket reds have a little sugar added at the blending bench.

Remember, that up to 2 g/l is unfermentable sugars. All red wines have a bit of this. Up to 4 g/l and I don’t think many professionals can taste this reliably. As for 7 g/l you might spot it if you are looking, but it doesn’t make the wines sweet: it just rounds off the edges and gives a little boost to the fruitiness.

OK, those who are already selling regular Bordeaux reds as ‘Claret’ are going to have to do some relabelling. I feel for them, a bit. But I feel a lot more for all the growers in the unfashionable parts of Bordeaux who are facing a crisis at the moment, and this initiative is a bold, smart and much-needed one, and deserves support.

And, interestingly, this is following the natural wine playbook. Lighter-style reds with a Glou Glou factor, about drinkability and ease, with fun labels. I think there’s definitely a market for more smashable natural red wine from Bordeaux: the only issue is that natural is often at small scale, isn’t in mainstream distribution, and the bottles are €30 a pop, not €10.

Most people know Beaumes-de-Venise from its famous sweet wine, Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise. And some of these wines are quite lovely.

But there’s another side to this region, and that’s the red wines. Since 2005 the Beaumes-de-Venise label can be found on red blends, and these can fly under the radar a bit. With its diverse terroirs – this is a hilly region with a really interesting mix of terroirs – there are some excellent reds here.

Soon the Cru will be extended to whites, too, and the rule there is that they need to have a little dollop of Muscat, at least 5%, because this is the white variety that Beaumes-de-Venise is famous for. Watch this space.

I visited in April and spent a few days touring round, and tasting a lot. Here are some of my wine highlights. The full report is now up on wineanorak.com.

REDS

Domaine Raboly Beaumes de Venise Clément V 2024 France
14% alcohol. 90% Grenache, 10% Syrah. Wonderful aromatics here with sweet black cherries, some wild herbs, and floral notes. The palate is fresh, supple, refined and elegant with a lovely core of raspberry and red cherry, showing real finesse and elegance. There’s a hint of olive and pepper, but the core is sweet, focused fruit. A wonderful expression of Beaumes de Venise, with Grenache showing what it can do here. 96/100

Domaine Saint Roch Epyminia Beaumes de Venise 2024
14.5% alcohol. 90% Syrah, 10% Viognier. This is really good. It has a floral nose with a touch of apricot, some white pepper, and lovely black cherry fruit. The palate has a bit of grippy structure, but also lovely fresh fruit. So expressive and well balanced, with warmth but also definition. 95/100

Domaine des Bernardins Beaumes de Venise 2024
14% alcohol. 10% of white grapes in the blend, 60% Grenache, 25% Syrah, 5% Mourvèdre, cofermented (Grenache with Mourvèdre, Syrah with Marsanne, Grenache with Grenache Blanc). Concrete tanks then stainless steel for ageing. Beautiful pure aromatics with elegant cherry and berry fruit. Supple and quite elegant with lovely red cherry and cranberry notes as well as a hint of pear and citrus in the background. Such purity and focus here with real elegance and definition to the fruit. 95/100 (in the UK with Thorman Hunt, The Wine Society, Tanners)

Domaine de la Ferme Saint-Martin Les Terres Jaunes Beaumes de Venise 2023 France
13% alcohol. 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah, 5% Teret Noir, 5% Counoise. Organic. Complex, open, herby, peppery nose with some juicy red fruits. The palate is bright and expressive with lots of energy, bright cherry fruit, a touch of cranberry, and massive drinkability. This is quite lovely. A real outlier, but delicious and thought-provoking. 95/100

Domaine Les Goubert Beaumes de Venise 2023
14.5% alcohol. Grenache, Syrah and Cinsault, organically farmed. Leather, herbs and spice on the nose, as well as bright, ripe berry fruits. The palate is intriguing, with brightness and a sense of lightness, but also some rich, sweet fruit. There’s a herbal twist and even a touch of mint. The Cinsault seems to be delivering something here in terms of lightness and texture, but also the fruit profile. Beautiful. 95/100

Domaine Saint Amant Bonelli Beaumes de Venise 2024
14% alcohol. Organic. 80% Grenache, 20% Syrah. Juicy, vivid, supple cherry and raspberry fruit with some nice herbal hints. There’s a massive drinkability and freshness to this wine which has a lovely hint of wildness, while staying fully correct! This is really good. 94/100

Domaine La Ferme Saint-Martin Costancia Beaumes de Venise 2022 France
13% alcohol. 50% Syrah, 50% Grenache Noir. Lively, peppery, herbal and bright with nice energy to the slightly compressed cherry and berry fruits. This is a lovely wine made in a slightly earlier-picked style and it works so well, with juicy fruit but also layers of detail and flavour. So interesting. 94/100

Domaine La Ferme Saint-Martin Diapir Beaumes de Venise 2022 France
13% alcohol. 50% Grenache, 25% Syrah, 15% Teret Noir, 10% Counoise. Expressive, vivid, very spicy and very peppery with bright wild strawberry and cherry fruit with nice herbal hints and good structure and acidity. This is a brilliantly expressive wine that has massive drinkability, plus some seriousness, too. 94/100

Domaine Raboly Beaumes de Venise Jean XXII 2023 France
14% alcohol. 90% Syrah, 10% Grenache. Wonderful aromatics here with a note of pepper and fine, fresh, floral cherry and berry fruits. There’s lovely energy on the palate with direct red and black cherry fruit showing nice presence. Slightly salty on the finish. 94/100

Rhonea Trias Beaumes de Venise 2023
15% alcohol. From Trias: gypsum and red clay soils at 300 m, that become very hard like concrete. Lovely aromatics of pepper-laden cherry fruits. Nice weight on the palate, which is rich and concentrated but well balanced with lovely sweet cherry and berry fruit. Quite textured. A bit of warmth on the finish, but overall really good – and it’s great to see the soils taking centre stage. 94/100

Domaine de Durban Beaumes de Venise Cuvée Prestige 2022
14.5% alcohol. 70% Grenache (from trias terroir), 25% Syrah, 5% Mourvèdre. Old, large wooden casks. Warm, spicy nose with a slight pepperiness. This is vibrant and juicy on the palate but also has some depth, with nice concentration and a drying tannic structure that works well as a foil to the sweet fruit. Very stylish with good balance. 94/100

Domaine de Fenouillet Beaumes de Venise Yvon Soard 2021
50% Syrah, 40% Grenache, 10% Mourvèdre in the dentelles (7 hectares in Suzette and 2 hectares in Roc Alaric), argile calcaire soils. Destemmed, then concrete tanks. Nice weight and density with sweet cherries and plums. Fleshy, a bit meaty, and spicy with nice definition and some tannin. Has good acidity and brightness. 94/100

Domaine des Garances Alzard Beaumes de Venise 2024
14.5% alcohol. Organic. 65% Grenache, 35% Syrah. Beautifully expressive nose with a fine peppery edge to the sweet berry fruits. The palate is elegant and expressive with nice dusty tannins providing a backbone, and a sense of freshness to the fruit. Juicy and expressive, this is really good. 94/100

Domaine Saint Amant Bonelli Beaumes de Venise 2024
14% alcohol. Organic. 80% Grenache, 20% Syrah. Juicy, vivid, supple cherry and raspberry fruit with some nice herbal hints. There’s a massive drinkability and freshness to this wine which has a lovely hint of wildness, while staying fully correct! This is really good. 94/100

Domaine Caroline Bonnefoy Beaumes de Venise 2023
14% alcohol. 75% Grenache, 25% Syrah. Organic. Really lively herb-laced, peppery raspberry fruit on the nose. The palate is peppery and herby with juicy cherry and berry fruits, and then a lovely dried herb and pepper savouriness. Fresh and expressive, and with massive drinkability. 94/100

Domaine des Garances Pierre Beaumes de Venise 2022
14.5% alcohol. 50% Carignan, 25% Grenache, 25% Syrah. Organic. Juicy, vivid and bright with red cherry and redcurrant fruit and some nice structure. There’s a great energy to this wine, with the Carignan bringing freshness and the Syrah and Grenache filling in the holes. Really lovely. 94/100

Domaine St Roch Cuvée des Taus Beaumes de Venise 2022
14.5% alcohol. 60% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 10% Cinsault. Delightfully peppery and expressive with some strawberry and cherry fruit, a bit of sweetness to the palate, and a sense of elegance and drinkability. I think the Cinsault has had a very positive influence on this blend. Quite lovely. 94/100

Xavier Vignon Arcane L’Etoile Beaumes de Venise NV
15% alcohol. No vintage declared on this wine. Elegant and slightly peppery with layered cherry, strawberry and plum fruit. Rounded, with a bit of spicy framing and some silkiness, but also a bit of structure on the finish. Very stylish and quite intriguing. 93/100

MUSCAT

Domaine des Bernardins Muscat de Beaumes de Venise 2024
15% alcohol. This has 25% of red Muscat in it. Wonderful aromatics with some sweet grapey richness, a hint of barley sugar, wax and tea. The palate is rich, textured and sweet with grapey richness, but also some lovely spiciness and density, finishing with notes of rose petals and dried herbs. A beautiful example of Beaumes de Venise. 94/100

Domaine des Bernardins Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Hommage NV
This is a blend of several vintages in a perpetual reserve, with 5% new wine being added each year, but this is already five years old. Started the solera in 2003. Previously they’d made a solera style until the appellation was granted in 1945, and they have recreated this old style. Wonderfully complex, spicy aromatics, with raisin, nuts and honey, as well as a touch of raisin. The palate has tea, honey, nut complexity. There’s still some freshness but also some lovely maturity and complexity. Concentrated, refined and spicy with nice intensity. Finishes spicy and long. 95/100

Domaine La Ligère Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Chante Coucou Rosé 2024
15.5% alcohol. Red and white Muscat, pressed together. Rose petal, tea and herbs on the nose with some cherry and pear fruit. The palate is sweet and herby with nice strawberry and table grape notes, as well as some cherry. Supple, fresh and stylish with nice complexity and a bit of structure. So lovely. 94/100

Domaine de Durban Muscat de Beaumes de Venise 1999
Golden colour. Spice, mint and honey on the nose with tinned pear, peach and table grape notes. The palate is sweet and spicy with a distinct minty edge with marmalade, melon and then some warm spiciness on the finish. Honeyed and slightly waxy with lovely depth. Mellow and enticing. 94/100

Domaine de Fenouillet Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Rouge 2025
This is really distinctive with some spice from skin maceration (8-10 days), as well as a bit of cherry fruit. So expressive and nicely complex, with sweetness as well as fruitiness and a bit of structure. Quite refined with a hint of almond and liquourice, finishing fresh. Very stylish. 94/100

Domaine du Fenouillet Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Sélection Ancestrale 2023
15% alcohol. 10% red Muscat. Full golden colour. Complex, spicy and layered with lovely depth, a hint of structure, and nice apple, pear and table grape characters. Good concentration and depth here, showing real interest. 94/100

Desmoiselle Suzette Muscat de Beaumes de Venise Rouge Plaisir 2024
15% alcohol. Red Muscat. Quite a full red colour. Juicy, tart, bright and energetic. Sweet pear, table grape and cherry fruit. Has a bit of structure, too, countering the primary fruit, and finishes juicy and tart. Really lovely. 94/100

Domaine La Ligère Muscat de Baumes de Venise Chante Coucou Rosé 2024
15.5% alcohol. Red and white Muscat, pressed together. Rose petal, tea and herbs on the nose with some cherry and pear fruit. The palate is sweet and herby with nice strawberry and table grape notes, as well as some cherry. Supple, fresh and stylish with nice complexity and a bit of structure. So lovely. 94/100

When I was at school, I was a classic in-betweener. I was friends with the geeky losers, and friends with the cool kids, but I didn’t fit into either group. I also had to dodge the bullies, and I was quite good at that. The term ‘in betweener’ was made popular by the very funny but ridiculous and rather edgy TV series, which you can catch a flavour of in the following:

So maybe that’s why I am such a fan of the cool grapes. The in betweener grapes. These are the varieties that aren’t regarded to be noble or famous, but which have their own identity, and are ones I always look out for on a wine list. I’m not filling my cellar with fine Burgundy and Bordeaux, although I deeply appreciate these wines. I’m looking out for wines that deliver pleasure and interest: I don’t need a ‘great’ wine experience every day, but I want my curiosity and intellect to be stretched a bit, and I want a bit of pleasure without financial pain.

Here’s a list of some cool grapes, and it’s personal, and probably incomplete (it’s off the top of my head). Any suggestions for additions?

Gamay

The grape of Beaujolais, which Kermit Lynch famously described as the one-night stand of wines. It may not make serious or great wines (whatever those are), but it makes delicious wines frequently. I’ve been following its performance around the world, seeking out bottles from other territories and trying them. Maybe I’ll even write a book about Gamay and become the world expert in a grape no one takes seriously.

Melon

The Muscadet grape. It just tastes of Melon. It’s not so much about fruit. It’s about identity.

Cinsault

This does so well in warm climates. Big berries, bomb-proof bunches, and delicious lighter-style red wines that taste delicious and distinctive. We need more Cinsault. Doing well in South Africa saving ambitious red blends from themselves.

Trousseau

Trousseau, Bastardo, Merenzao. What a variety. Elegant, floral, energetic lighter style reds. Just brilliant.

Sylvaner

Alsace and Franconia excel in this variety. In Alsace it’s all old vine because no one has planted it in the last 50 years. It makes grapes with real tension and focus, and transparency too. They don’t taste so fruity, but they have presence and intensity.

Fer Servadou

I love this variety. Meat, blood, iron, iodine. It is also known as Pinenc and Braucol, and it excels in Marcillac, as well as several other Southwestern France appellations. Deeply unfashionable, but just so good.

Baga

All the textbooks are wrong. Bairrada’s main red grape isn’t tough and hard, it’s beautiful. It just needs to be handled well. It’s capable of greatness.

Alvarinho

Aka Albariño, I guess this is getting famous now. But it’s a superb variety that languished in the B-list for too long, probably because green Spain and Portugal weren’t being taken seriously. Lovely apricot notes and good acidity, and it doesn’t care about harvest rain.

Dolcetto

Considered a lesser grape in Piemonte, but it’s just so juicy and delicious and vivid, and almost always a bargain. It’s a grape variety that makes wines you want to drink, not to cellar, not to admire.

Gaglioppo

I stumbled on this red grape from southern Italy fairly recently, from the Ciro appellation. It’s amazing. Elegant but structured, floral, manages heat well.

Xinomavro

A genius variety from Greece, making tannin but bright and fine wines that are just so energetic.

Frappato

Another variety for a talent for making bright, elegant red wines in hot climates. One I’m always curious to try.

With wine, there are different levels of branding, and sometimes there is an overlap. It’s interesting to explore this brand ecology.

At the most basic level, grape varieties act as a brand. A customer might just ask for a red wine or a white wine. But they might also seek out a wine labelled with a grape variety, where the grape variety makes the brand promise that this wine will be in a particular style. If you chose a Cabernet Sauvignon, you will likely be looking for a richer style red wine with some blackcurrant fruit character, whereas if you choose Pinot Noir you probably want a lighter, more perfumed red wine with some cherry fruit. A bottle labelled Chardonnay will likely give you a richer white wine, while one labelled Sauvignon Blanc should give you something crisp and perhaps slightly grassy. Of course, these are brands shared among any producer who chooses to use them: they are collective brands.

The wine world relies a lot on collective branding, which sounds very socialist in nature. Something shared, where everyone is trying to work towards the collective good.

Indeed, the wine industry in the classic European wine regions has been based on the concept of the collective brand, and the main element here is the notion of appellation. Let’s pick a few examples. Chablis is the famous northern outpost of Burgundy that grows just Chardonnay in limestone-based soils. Chablis is the collective brand used by all the producers in the region, good and bad. Most consumers don’t know producers’ names, so if they want a Chablis, then that’s what they will be choosing as a buying cue.

Their hope of getting a good one is enhanced by buying it from a reputable retailer, or a wine list in a good restaurant. The shared brand’s value is enhanced by the work of conscientious producers and diminished by the work of the less competent producers; all benefit equally, though. The region tries to protect the brand equity by rules on production (for example, yields, farming practices, restrictions on vineyard interventions that might diminish quality) and a tasting test. And then, as well as the collective brand of Chablis, there are three other tiers. Below Chablis is Petit Chablis. Then above, the Premier Crus and Grand Crus, which act as brands in their own right and also as named vineyards.

Bordeaux is an interesting collective brand. 100 000 hectares fall under its remit, but its reputation largely rests on the top classed growth wines from the Médoc, around 4% of the region’s production. There are many cheap wines which spend the Bordeaux brand equity, while the fancy properties build it up. But the top wines don’t need the Bordeaux collective brand to sell: they sell by means of their own names, which have substantial equity, or the hierarchal ranking ladder of the 1855 classification (‘if this is a third growth, it must be pretty good’).

As well as these collective regional brands, we also have collective brands at the national level. For many consumers, the brand promise of a wine from a particular country is useful to them. For example, someone doesn’t need a big knowledge of wine to know that they’d like a wine from Argentina, or Chile, or Australia, or South Africa. Often this national-level brand is appended to a grape variety. Think of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or South African Chenin Blanc, or Argentine Malbec as examples of this. And then we have grape variety and region tied together: Marlborough Sauvignon, Central Otago Pinot Noir, Californian Chardonnay, Napa Cabernet. These are all collective brands where some are contributing more brand equity than others, but all benefit from the shared brand promise.

For most normal people, that is low-involvement consumers, the collective brand is all that matters.

Then we have what we think of more commonly as brands: the name of the producer, or a privately owned brand of a producer. In some cases, these brands are famous enough for low involvement consumers to have heard of them, but for most wine producers – and remember that wine is a highly fragmented market – the sort of investment needed to get this sort of market penetration is out of their reach.

Champagne is a good example of a heavily branded space where many of the well known brands are household names. Lots of people have heard of Moët et Chandon, Krug, Dom Pérignon, Pol Roger, Mumm, Roederer, Laurent Perrier and Taittinger, for example.

Outside Champagne, we have big still wine brands. Jacob’s Creek, Hardy’s, Wolff Blass, Penfolds and YellowTail are well known from Australia. From Chile, Concha y Toro. From Argentina, Trapiche and Catena. From California, Opus One, Mondavi, Sutter Home, Barefoot and Gallo are all readily recognizable to casual wine drinkers. Europe has fewer big brands, but Torres in Spain and Whispering Angel from Provence have widespread recognition.

Historically, Portugal has been important in the branded wine space, with Mateus and Lancers gaining fans with their distinctively packaged rosés. And Germany’s Blue Nun was a staple for many drinkers in the 1970s and 1980s.

For the most part, though, it’s the collective brands that drive purchasing behaviour in wine. And this is very much reflected by how consumers shop. Most people rarely go into a bottle store with one specific wine in mind. They may well go in with a style of wine they want to buy – for example, a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc – but then they choose from the offerings available in that style at the price point they are comfortable with. There is a high level of substitutability in the wine world, and this reflects the fragmented nature of the industry. If you are a producer targeting low involvement consumers, then it’s not likely to be the equity that you have built into your own brand that will end up influencing purchasing behaviour. It is more likely to be one of the collective brands, which you get to contribute towards and benefit from, but have no control over. And, of course, it’s distribution that is critical. The customer can only buy the wine that is in front of them.

What does this mean for wine producers? It’s good for everyone if people are building equity in their collective brands. For Portugal, it’s good if the big wine companies are doing a good job because, by the fact that they are so well distributed, they have a lot of ability to build brand equity that others can benefit from. Collective brands do sound quite socialist, but the rising tide does float all boats, and if Portuguese producers can see themselves competing with other wine countries, rather than with each other, then the benefit of collaboration, knowledge sharing and joint marketing becomes clearer.

Since I wrote this, I’ve come across some interesting work, including some posters from the last Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference in Adelaide last year:

• This study shows some promise in hyperspectral imaging for testing for smoke taint

• This study discusses the use of smoke loggers in vineyards that will tell you how badly (if at all) a block is affected

• One very promising method for remediation of affected wine is the use of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs)

[This is a picture of Mayacamas in the Napa Valley: the effect of the fires from 2020 can still be seen in this beautiful mountain landscape]

Here’s the article:

Consider the smell of smoke. It can be very comforting: think of sitting round a campfire, or logs burning in the grate of a country pub in winter. But in the wrong context it can be terrifying - the sign that something is badly wrong and danger is at hand. We have a similarly ambivalent relationship to the taste of smoke in our food and drink. Some people prize the distinctive bonfire and peat aromas of Islay whisky or German Rauchbier, while others dislike it. Rather more enjoy the taste of smoked salmon. And the flavour of barbecued beef brisket cooked for hours in a smoker is pretty much universally loved. But smoky wine? It has fewer followers.

Many wine regions are in areas that, from time to time, experience bushfires. These have been in the news a lot recently. In December and January 2020, Australia suffered devastating bush fires. ‘Australia is prone to fire,’ said Wine Australia’s Stuart Barclay, addressing journalists in London in a briefing about the bushfires as part of the Australia day tastings. ‘It is part of the natural landscape. But this year has been a monumental impact. 15 years of drought has made the country dry, and the fires have been almost impossible to manage.’ Barclay emphasizes that while 1500 hectares of vines are within fire-affected zones, this represents just 1% of Australia’s vineyard area. The Adelaide Hills, though, was particularly badly hit, with 648 hectares affected. ‘This ranges from complete devastation to partial devastation,’ says Barclay. ‘A major issue is the potential impact of smoke on grapes and wine.’

Australia isn’t the only country that has experienced severe bush fires in recent years. In October 2017 and October 2019 California had fires on a major scale that involved the destruction of some wineries and vineyards, although many of the grapes had already been harvested at this stage. Canada’s Okanagan Valley has also had issues with smoke tainted grapes in recent years. Forest fires in Portugal in June 2017 impacted vineyards. In light of the human and wildlife impact of these natural disasters it seems trivial to be thinking about the impact of bush fires on wine production, but the issue of smoke taint is something that is concerning many within the wine industry. And both those growing grapes and those buying grapes want a way of measuring whether or not grapes that have been exposed to smoke will produce tainted wines.

As a country where this is a recurring problem, Australia has led the way in this research. The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) began looking at this issue in earnest in 2003 after a bad bush fire season. Of particular interest are the following questions. What are the components in smoke that can taint wines? Which are the vulnerable periods in the vine’s life cycle, where smoke exposure has the potential to cause problems? And how can you test grapes to see whether they are affected or not?

The smoke taint compounds

This first set of studies concluded that smoke taint was a real problem, with wines from smoke-affected vineyards displaying characters described in sensory work as “smoky,” “burnt,” “ash,” “ashtray,” “salami,” and “smoked salmon.” They also identified two compounds as key culprits: guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol, although there probably were other chemicals involved, albeit at lower concentrations. They also showed that the taint compounds were found within the skins of the grapes, but not in the pulp or in the surface waxes on the skins.

Interestingly, it turns out that the chief chemical culprits in smoke taint are already present in many wines. Guaiacol and methylguiacol are formed by burning lignin, the structural component of wood. And when barrels are heated with fire to bend the staves, this results in the production of a number of flavour compounds from the wood that then find their way into wine. The concentrations typically found in barrel fermented or aged wines seem to be fine; It’s only when they are present at higher levels that they cause problems.

Further studies looked at the timing issue, and found that smoke exposure at any time between veraison (when the berries change colour and enter the final stage of ripening) and harvest can cause smoke taint, the most sensitive period being a week after veraison and afterwards. It is also worth noting that repeated smoke exposure builds up the level of smoke taint, as might be expected. The take-home message: the less smoke the better. Evidence suggests that the smoke taint compounds are absorbed by the skin of the berries (thus bigger, more developed berries are more at risk), where they bind to sugars in the plant tissue in a process known as glycosylation.

This is important, because it means that if you taste grapes that have just been picked, you can’t taste these bound smoke taint compounds. The sugars have to be cleaved off, either by enzyme activity or hydrolysis. So the only way to know whether grapes are smoke affected is to do a microvinification and then taste the results. But if there was a way to know just after the smoke exposure whether the grapes are tainted or not, this could save growers a lot of money: the work that is needed to farm the vines if the crop is going to be picked is a lot more expensive than just keeping the vines alive, and if the resulting grapes are tainted, this is money badly spent. And for insurance purposes, or a dispute between a grower and a winery, a chemical analysis would be much easier than arguing over a sensory analysis.

Smoke composition

Smoke is chemically complex, with an estimated 500 aroma compounds present in its composition. Smoking food has been a traditional means of preservation, dehydrating meats and fish while at the same time inhibiting bacterial growth. The main chemicals associated with the smoke flavour in affected wines are guaiacol, 4-methylguaiacol, syringol, p-cresol, o-cresol and m-cresol. Initially, one thought was that it might be possible to wash the grapes while they were still on the vine to get rid of the smoke compounds so they didn’t end up in the wine. In a study from the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) in 2003, attempts were made to wash fruit in various ways. The treatments tested were cold water, cold water plus wetting agent, warm water, cold water plus 5 percent ethanol, and milk. None of these worked.

This is because these flavour compounds enter the grapes soon after exposure via the waxy cuticle around the berry. They enter the berry skin cells under the cuticle, and this is where things get interesting. These cells respond to smoke compounds by using a detoxifyication process called glycosylation, which involves binding a sugar molecule to them. ‘Glycosylation is a defence mechanism,’ says Eric Hervé of California’s ETS Laboratories, who have been at the forefront of looking at the science of smoke impact on grapes. ‘Smoke compounds have some toxicity, and so the defence is to bind them to sugars and make them water soluble so they can be translocated into the cell and inter them in the vacuoles where they won’t interfere with metabolism.’

This creates an immediate problem. As well as making the smoke compounds less toxic, glycosylation also takes away their aromatic potential: they stop smelling.

So if winemakers want to see whether their grapes are affected, then they can’t just sample them; something needs to happen to cleave the sugars off so that their aromatic potential can be revealed. And this is exactly what yeasts do during fermentation, via a process called hydrolysis. ‘It looks like it is yeast driven and mostly in the first days of fermentation,’ says Hervé. For this reason, the AWRI recommend testing smoke-affected grapes for a panel of smoke-related compounds, and then doing a sensory assessment of a small-scale ferment. This is more accurate the closer to the actual harvest date it takes place: they recommend a couple of weeks before harvest, which gives enough time for the results to be available so that the right action can be taken.

What about analysing for the glycosylated compounds? It turns out this is not so straightforward. ‘Our current investment in measuring these glycosylated compounds exceeds a million dollars in hardware,’ says Gordon Burns of ETS. ‘It is entirely a speculative investment that as we go down the road we will be able to serve the industry better. We are building that very necessary background information about native levels of all these compounds.’ In the meantime, they believe that looking at the levels of two of the free volatiles, guaiacol and 4-methylguaiacol, is the best way to go. Even though most of these compounds will be glycosylated, looking at the small amount that is free gives a good indicator of whether the grapes are smoke-impacted. ‘We have been doing this for 10 years now,’ says Hervé. ‘Each year the fire events are different. The timing of exposure to smoke is different. The fuel is different. But over the years we haven’t seen much difference in terms of the numbers. Typically, guaiacol is three to five times higher than 4-methylguaiacol. This is a good signature that it is coming from smoke.’

‘We can always add more compounds,’ says Hervé, ‘but the problem is that the throughput can suffer, when we need a fast screening tool. And I’m not sure it will improve the prediction that much. When we analyse grapes exposed to smoke, based on the results we can’t say that there is no risk, but we can say that the risk is low to minimal, or significant but still moderate, or high, or very high. That’s the best that we can do.’

How to treat affected grapes

So what can be done if the grapes look to be affected? Winemakers have a few options.

The first is to try to minimize any transfer of smoke compounds from the grape skins into the must. This is easier for whites and rosés than it is for reds, which rely on extended skin contact for colour and structure. So hand harvesting is a good first step, because it minimizes skin maceration. It’s also important to make sure that there are no leaves in the harvest bins, because these also have smoke compounds in them. Fruit should be kept cool, because this results in less extraction, and it’s ideal to press the intact whole bunches. The free run (the first 400 litres per ton from the press) should be kept separate because this will have fewer smoke compounds. But this is just applicable to whites and rosés.

For reds, the received wisdom is that shorter extraction time is better than longer, but ETS dispute this. ‘Smoke compounds are mainly in skins so if you prevent skin contact you minimize the problem,’ says Hervé. ‘This works beautifully for whites or rosés, but for reds this doesn’t work in our experience. The smoke compounds migrate into fermenting juice extremely quickly.’ They have studied this. ‘In all the red ferments we have followed, the maximum number of smoke markers are already extracted after three days. Trying to shorten the fermentation with reds is actually making the situation worse because it is a lighter wine that shows up smoke impact more clearly.’

There are some other winemaking techniques that can be used to mitigate smoke impact, but they all have their downsides. One is to fine with a product called activated carbon, which is already used in some winemaking settings. Carbon grabs hold of organic materials and removes them: for this reason it’s widely used during filtration in water treatment. The problem is, it isn’t particularly selective. It can be used for treating juice or wine, but it has a negative effect on other aroma compounds. Another approach has been to use reverse osmosis, which is a specialized filtration process, coupled with a technique called solid-phase adsorption. Reverse osmosis takes out a permeate fraction from the wine that contains water, acids, alcohols, and chemicals below a certain molecular point cutoff. This fraction is then treated alone with solid-phase resorption to take out the smoke compounds before returning it to the wine. It removes some beneficial aroma compounds too, but the hope is that because just this small fraction of the wine is treated, its negative impacts will be limited. One of the problems with this approach is that while treatment has been effective in some cases, the smoke impact came back after a while, presumably because of the ongoing presents of some glycosidases that later hydrolysed to reveal smoke compounds that weren’t removed, so wines treated this way have to be drunk quickly.

Chris Carpenter of Jackson Family Wines, who makes the wines of Lokoya, Cardinale, La Jota and Mt Brave in Napa, has had some experience with smoke impact. In his experience, different varieties show the smoke differently. ‘Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec were crushed by it,’ he says. ‘Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc fared relatively better.’ He adds that Syrah is a problem for analysis, ‘because many of the compounds you are testing for in smoke occur naturally in Syrah.’ After crushing affected grapes, Carpenter added inactivated yeast hulls, which are supposed to soak up some of the smoke residue, but he’s not sure whether this helped. ‘At the time any of the scrubbing technologies that were available were not able to scrub bound compounds,’ he says. ‘Some of the companies that are working on that have now purported to be able to deal with more of the bound complexes but there is no independent science that is backing those technologies.’ One of the difficulties he finds in assessing smoke-impacted grapes is how quickly these compounds affect your sense of taste and smell. ‘After two or three wines that are tainted your pallet is dead and you need to reset or you lose the ability to taste anything,’ he says. This complicates assessing whether wines have a problem or not. ‘We still do not understand the dynamics of smoke taint, the compounds and their evolution over time,’ says Carpenter. ‘There is no solution that we have yet to be presented. If you bottle wines that you suspect have smoke in them you are taking a huge risk.’ He also thinks it’s a huge risk even to bottle wines from grapes that were on the vine during smoke events, even if they don’t show any effect, because they could in the future. ‘We ended up scrapping two-thirds of my inventory from 2017 because the risk of bottling those wines was too great.’ So no Lokoya 2017 was produced.

Dan Petroski of Larkmead has experience processing potentially smoke-affected grapes. ‘In 2017, after our own harvest was complete, we crushed 40 tons of grapes for a vineyard client whose winery was in a quarantined zone and the grapes sat through a week of the fires and smoke exposure on the valley floor of Napa,’ he recalls. As part of the process, in order to support the client, they did sensory evaluation and chemical analysis along the way. ‘Thankfully, the client’s grapes did not have perceptible smoke issue from a chemistry or sensory perspective. We don’t know why in this particular instance this is true for us and not for others. But this is all I know.’ He also had a look at some wines that were in barrel to see whether any taint was seeping into the wine from the smoky air. ‘The new French oak barrels of the aging wine (2016 vintage) had barrel char similar to what we would normally see in a barrel aged wine with no perceptible smoke impact.’

One winery that did end up bottling some wine from smoke-affected grapes was Anthill Farms in Healdsburg. This single-vineyard Pinot specialist had smoke in Anderson Valley in 2008. ‘We declassified all the wines, carbon filtered the good lots and blended into one wine of about 200 cases that we sold to our customers with this explanation, I believe for $25,’ says co-owner Anthony Filiberti. ‘It was good wine, not amazing. Most people were happy and enjoyed the wine.’ However, some people customers complained and posted their thoughts on various wine bulletin boards, so it ended up being bad publicity for the winery. Filiberti says that he still drinks the wine from time to time, opening bottles at customer pick-up events. ‘Some taste pure and delicious, some taste like barbecue chips.’

It’s an eclectic list. And not necessarily a list of my absolute favourite wines. It also makes me realise that a lot of my eating and drinking is at someone else’s expense.

Retail

• Savage Thief in the Night Grenache 2024

• Soca-Rel Manto Negro 2023 (6 bottles)

• Gonzalez Bastias Pais Matorral (6 bottles)

• Partida Creus VN Vinel.Lo Blanco 2023 (6 bottles)

• Rall Grenache Noir, Swartland 2024 (Case 3)

• Rall Syrah, Swartland 2024 (Case 3)

• Château Romanin, Rosé IGP Les Alpilles 2025 (2 bottles)

• Fogwell Syrah, Western Cape 2024 (6 bottles)

• Sylvaner, Domaine Albert Boxler 2023

• Centralis Lowburn Central Otago Pinot Noir 2024

• Vanguardist ‘Oeno’ McLaren Vale Grenache 2023 (2 bottles)

• Vanguardist ‘Blewitt’ McLaren Vale Grenache Syrah 2023 (2 bottles)

• Chardonnay Beton, Kamil Barczentewicz 2023

• Dobre Modre, Kamil Barczentewicz 2022 (2 bottles)

• Xinomavro Jeunes Vignes, Thymiopoulos 2022 (2 bottles)

• Langham Corallian Classic Cuvée, Dorset NV

• Giant Steps Bastard Hill Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 2023

• Giant Steps Bastard Hill Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2023 (2 bottles)

• Champagne Bollinger NV (2 bottles)

• Champagne Etienne Calsac Les Rocheforts

• Château Marquis de Terme Margaux 2022

• Château de Saint Gall Orpale 2012

Restaurant

• Navajas Niepoort 2014

• Sarris Panochori 2024 Kefalonia

• Rajat Parr and Envinate Misturado

• Arnot Roberts Gamay Noir

• Michael Gross Gorca Slovenia

• Champagne La Rogerie Bourg Sud

• Comando G La Bruja 2023

• Champagne Ulysses Colin Les Pierreres

• Champagne Egly Ouriet

• Domaine Dandelion Pet Nat 2023 Bourgogne, France

• Mason Vineyard Cabernet Franc Rosé Niagara

• Pearl Morisette Gamay Niagara

• Preisinger Orange Austria

• Agricola Villa Picta Lambrusco

• JC Garnier Les Justices

• Domaine Bohn Coup des Jus Alsace

• Les Jardins de Theseis Gamay

• Tue Bouef Le Brin de Chevre Loire

• I Brand La Marea Grenache 2019 Central Coast, California

• Cleto Chiarli Veccia Modena Lambrusco

• Louis Jadot Bouzeron Aligoté 2023

• Trapl Rosé Carnuntum Austria

• Sclavos Efranor 2023 Kefalonia

• Langham Culver Dorset England

• Place of Changing Winds Heathcote Syrah 2022

• Never Been Asked to Dance Chenin Blanc 2022 Duncan Savage

• Chatzivaritis Estate Negoska Carbonic 2024 Goumenissa, Greece

• Daskalaki Silva Grifos 2023 Crete, Greece

• Thymiopoulos Naoussa Alta 2023 Greece

• Sarris Lygia Orange Wine 2024 Cephalonia, Greece

• Santameriana Sant’Or Skin Contact 2024 PGI Peloponnese, Greece

• Tetramythos Laurier Noir ‘natur’ 2023 Aigialea, Peloponnese, Greece

• Bergianti Per Franco Lambrusco

• Bergianti Fine Lambrusco

• Giuseppe Rinaldi Langhe Freisa 2023

• Perbenci Franchina e Giarone Rosato Frizzante

• Remedio Rosso

• Hiraeth Vino Rosso

• Raguzzoni Ouverture 2023 Lambrusco

It’s natural.

It’s clean, delightful and delicious, and not faulty. It has, to my knowledge, no additions at all, so it’s a zero-zero. It’s the VN Blanco from Partida Creus, it’s the 2023 vintage, and it blends together seven varieties from Penedes: Garnacha Blanca, Moscatel, Vinyater, Pansé, Macabeu, Xarel·lo and Parellada. It’s also 10.5% alcohol.

This isn’t an expensive wine: you can pick it up for around £20 in the UK, and it’s utterly delicious, and I’m glad I bought 6 bottles.

But I’m careful who I serve this to. While it isn’t faulty, it does taste a bit natural. It’s a full golden colour and has beautiful crystalline citrus fruit, some ripe apple, a bit of tannic grip and a delicious saltiness, finishing crisp with good acidity.

I know, though, that there are some of my colleagues who would hate this wine. They want their wines to fit into a box. They like reassuring conventional flavours. They like fruit-driven techno wines with a bit of new oak. They like wines that taste expensive.

I regularly go to wine dinners with some hospo friends, mainly working in importing and in restaurants, and we bring our own wines, and they would love this sort of wine. You can see the sort of thing we drink:

https://wineanorak.com/2025/07/29/what-the-cool-kids-drink-a-dinner-at-noble-rot-with-friends/

https://wineanorak.com/2026/01/04/a-brilliant-wine-dinner-with-friends-at-the-drapers-arms-with-15-interesting-wines/

But you have to know your crowd. Even wine professionals differ in their preferences, and although I try to recognize the merits of all wines, even wines that aren’t in my favoured styles, you can only go so far.

And as an aside: I think it would be really helpful to see a running list of wines that wine commentators and writers have actually spent their hard-earned cash on. I think this would certainly let me see which writers I’d like to read more from.

In fact, I might write an article with a list of my wine purchases in the last six months. One in restaurants, and one retail or home delivery!

I’ve fallen prey to this when I’ve dabbled in other fields. Back when I used to play a little golf, a friend took me to his club, Sunningdale, for a round. This is a proper course, and he was a proper golfer. I was the sort of golfer who could hit the occasional great shot, but who also peppered a round with some absolute shockers. He was fussy about the ball he used, while I’d use any ball. Was he being fussy? I thought so at the time, but now I recognise he had the sort of skill level where the way the ball would come off the face of the club was something he could feel.

Another parallel is music and guitars. My main guitar is a Martin D15, and I chose it by going into a guitar store in Madison (Wisconsin, USA: I was there for a science conference) and trying perhaps 30 different acoustic guitars with a friend. Of all the ones I tried, this sounded and felt the best. And I already had a good guitar (Takamine EN10, which I bought as a student, and which I used when I was in the band Tintagel; I lent it to another friend maybe 15 years ago, so I think it’s still out there somewhere).

The same happened when I bought a mandolin. I’d owned a few, and they’d been OK, but then I went into a shop and tried a bunch, and this was the best. Now, to a normal person who doesn’t play, they might not spot the difference. But as someone who plays a lot, I just know when an instrument is really good. It’s clear.

I think the same is true for wine. When you have true expertise, earned the hard way by lots of practical experience and a degree of talent that has been applied well, you know when you encounter a really good wine. It might not always be easy to communicate it, but it’s often clearer than people without this expertise realise. The great wines stand out. Ranking the best producers in a region isn’t that hard.

Be careful before you rush to judgement on those who make quality calls from a position of expertise. Often, they aren’t just making it up, even if it seems that way to you, and you are tasting the same wines.

The good news: the region, which had been suffering terribly through drought, had plenty of winter rainfall, and so this has been a good growing season. But it’s an early one. [The canopies here look really healthy.]

This isn’t the only region in France to be affected. The early start in many places, which led to a lot of spring frost issues, has pulled harvest forwards. Normally, the French take August off for holidays. In many regions, August is now harvest month.

Champagne, for example, is looking at its earliest harvest ever. The official start date is projected for 15 August, which is two days earlier than 2020. Other August harvests have been 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2018.

In Burgundy, the projected harvest date for Crémants (sparkling wines) is 7 August, with the still wines beginning on 20 August.

So what’s the problem with early harvests? The main one is that it brings picking into summer temperatures, as opposed to the milder, more benign conditions of autumn.

This makes it harder to get the time of picking right. Especially for reds, you want sugar ripeness to coincide with flavour ripeness. Sugars rise as acid levels fall, and flavour accumulation (physiological ripeness) does its own thing, with the result sometimes being that to get this desirable flavour ripeness, potential alcohol levels are higher than desired and acidity requires correction in the winery.

In summer conditions, sugar ripeness often races ahead. In Autumn conditions, the rate of sugar accumulation slows down, allowing growers to pick when the flavours have accumulated nicely.

Whites give a bit more latitude in picking, but for reds, which are fermented on the skins, the decision is a bit more critical.

The other challenge for early harvests is the temperature: it makes it uncomfortable for pickers (if hand picking is employed), and you don’t want to be processing warm grapes. In regions where harvest temperatures are normally hot, a lot of night picking goes on. An alternative is to harvest in small crates, then stack them on a pallet and put them overnight into a refrigerated container or cold room, processing them the next morning.

I’d been asked to interview him for Fine & Rare (you can read the piece here), and over a couple of snatched video interviews over dodgy Italian internets while he was busy out and about tending to vines, I found his story utterly compelling.

Here was someone who has taken a subject that’s arcane and routine, and made it sexy.

[Marco Simonit and Pierpaolo Sirch]

I got to meet Marco in Barcelona and then Lech a couple of years later, and despite his wine celebrity status, he was charming and friendly, and eager to share his ideas. In Spring 2024 I went to the Simonit & Sirch Festival del Potatare, the second edition of their pruning festival held at San Felice in Chianti Classico. The first day was a technical conference looking at the role of water in viticulture and how this has become a major issue in many of the world’s wine regions. The second day saw the pruning competition, and an excuse to have some fun in the vineyard.

In mentioning the work Simonit has done to spread the word about pruning the right way, I also need to draw attention to the less-heralded work from François Dal, in the Loire Valley. It was Dal who rediscovered the work of Rene Lafon from the 1920s, who wrote about the Guyot Poussard method of pruning, which was taken up by Dal and then popularized more broadly by Simonit. This Lafon classic was recently republished with an English translation alongside the original French by Rob Walters (of Bibendum in Australia, and winegrower with The Place of Changing Winds in Macedon Ranges).

[François Dal in the vineyard with a small chainsaw, used for curettage, a process that treats the vine trunk disease Esca by removing infected wood, in a sort of vine dentistry approach.]

There are a number of themes intertwined into the message of soft pruning. The key one is to respect the sap flow in the vine, and allowing the natural branching structure to develop. Pruning is an assault, and if pruning cuts are made in the wrong place, then you can end up with a lot of dead wood that then impairs the ability of the sap to flow freely through the vascular tissue.

As part of this, pruning cuts should not be made too close to the main trunk. If you are cutting off some wood, leave a stub that’s at least the diameter of the wood you have removed. This is because post-pruning there is some die back, and if you make the cut flush with the older wood, then the cone of desiccation can intrude into the older wood and constrict the vascular tissue. Using electric pruning shears makes it easier to cut like this, so Simonit and his team almost always use manual shears, and the favoured brand is Felco.

Controlled Branching. Learn to give a defined shape to the structure of the vine, promoting healthy growth with controlled branching.

Continuity of the sap flow. Throughout the structure of the plant. The second principle of the SIMONIT&SIRCH pruning concerns the continuity of the sap flow, the pathway of translocation between the roots and the canopy, throughout the entire structure of the vine.

Respecting the crown (basal) buds. Learn to make small cuts on one- or two-year-old wood and respect the crown (basal) buds. Precision pruning reduces the area of the exposed wound and the consequent desiccation.

Spare wood. An additional defense for the grape vine. Learn to prune allowing for a portion of protective wood when cutting on two-year-old wood or older wood, to reduce the effects of desiccation.

[The four principles of the Simonit & Sirch pruning method, from their website]

There are two main ways of pruning. One is what’s called cane pruning. The idea here is to leave one, two, three or even four canes which are then tied horizontally to fruiting wires. At each node a shoot is produced, and hopefully each shoot will have a couple of bunches of grapes. The shoots will become next year’s canes, and choosing the right ones is a critical stage of pruning. Often, when the vine is pruned to one or two canes (the most common choice for high-quality viticulture) a replacement two-bud spur will be left. The idea is that the shoot this produces will ideally be next year’s cane for tying down.

[This is a single-Guyot cane-puning system as used in Burgundy. The cane with 8 buds has grown from last year’s replacement spur. The replacement spur for this year is on the right and has budded early: it has more oomph to it.]

See: cane pruning in pictures

[Two variations on cane pruning. Above, in the Mosel, where canes are bent downwards and looped round to create a sort of heart arrangement. Below, in Chablis, where there are two arms each with a cane at the end, and one overlapping the other to fill the canopy out (these arms are renewed at intervals; this system is also used in Champagne for Chardonnay.)]

[The consequences of bad cane pruning: where the canes are chosen for their quality alone, with no regard to their branching position, you end up with a crowded head like this.]

The second is called spur pruning, and this is used either with a bush vine (head trained) or with a permanent cordon, usually with two arms along the fruiting wire. Each spur will usually have two buds on it. This is easier to do and less technically challenging than cane pruning. Some varieties have what is called low basal bud fertility, and here spur pruning will result in inconsistent and low yields: the first couple of buds tend not to produce grape clusters. Then cane pruning is preferred.

[Spur pruning in the Barossa Valley, Australia. A permanent cordon supports shoots that each year are pruned back to two buds.]

[This is a four-cordon system in the Barossa Valley. One of the downsides of cordon-based systems is that you can get dead nodes or even dead arms, and this can reduce yields.]

[A bush vine in the Rhône pruned to two bud spurs at the tip of each arm.]

There is another option, and that’s not to prune at all, or simply to go through the vineyard trimming back the dormant growth a bit (minimal pruning).

[Zero pruning approach, here in the Rheingau, near Rudesheim.]

I’ve seen this approach in action in Australia and also the Rheingau in Germany. The result is lots of small clusters throughout the canopy, rather than in the fruit zone. It’s usually undertaken to save money in the vineyard where labour is expensive. The grapes are almost always machine harvested. But in the Rheingau one producer said they did it to spread the vintage out a bit - the grapes mature later - and they were quite happy with the quality.

[An example of nice cane pruning where the sap flow is being respected: this is from Clos Henri in New Zealand’s Marlborough region, and the vine is yet to be pruned for the next year.]

Timing of pruning is interesting. If you prune very late, you can delay budburst, and potential lessen the risk of catching a spring frost. You can also leave a sacrificial cane, which isn’t tied down. This gets going early, and delays budburst in the ones you want. If frost gets it, too bad, you are going to go through and take it out anyway.

Enough for now. Suffice to say, pruning is such an interesting topic!