I tend to go on a fair amount of press trips as a wineblogger and they are all fantastic. I mean who wouldn’t enjoy the chance to visit the winemakers in their own milieu, tasting wines that quite possibly have been resting in the cellars for years or wines that never even leave the estate but are saved for special visitors....
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Bouncing along the dirt road, we slowly wound our way up and down the hills of the Douro Valley to get to Jorge Serodio Borges newest project in the Vale de Mendiz, the revitalization of Quinta da Maneula. Jorge is the winemaker for Quinta Passadouro but alongside that he also runs Wine & Sol with his wife, Sandra Tavares, wine...
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I never know what interesting food and wine combinations I’m going to come across but one of the more unlikely pairings, to me anyway, was 10 yr old tawny port and fresh orange slices. They was presented as dessert at lunch while we were visiting Quinta da Gaviosa in the Douro Valley. I was in the Douro with Discover the...
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EEEEKKKKKK! That is one scary looking fish. I bet you’re wondering what exactly it has to do with wine. Well, that is what greeted me after my tour of the cellars of Churchill’s Port’s new visitor centre and lodge in Gaia, Portugal. It’s not some mutant fished out of a polluted river in South East Asia, it...
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When I was in Paris last, I popped into Juveniles wine bar for a long leisurely lunch. Juveniles is a Paris institution. It was one of the first wine bar of it’s kind to open in Paris 25 years ago. At the time, the concept of offering various wines by the glass was mostly unheard of in Paris. Scotsman Tim Johnson presides...
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Le Meurice in Paris manages to combine understated elegance with quirkiness while at the same time enveloping you in a cocoon of luxury. That is the best way I can think of to describe this de luxe (in the truest sense of the word) luxury hotel. The history of the hotel goes back to 1771 in Calais where the founder of the hotel,...
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