Features Archives - Circle of Wine Writers

From the Chair: Texture is the new flavour

Posted on January 26, 2025January 31, 2025 by Meg Maker

Meg Maker explores the second sense in wine — texture. For a few days last week, a rhinovirus gripped my system. My normally prismatic sensorium went dark. Flavours were reduced to the basics: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, savory. My morning tea was hot, astringent, wet but curiously drying. A segment of orange was cold and juicy, sweet and sour. Cheese seemed sticky, fatty, salty. Bread was spong...

Perusing a Prosecco pearl

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Dijana Grgić

Dijana Grgić takes off to the bubbling core of the Veneto, to Valdobbiadene, and savours the spumantes from Villa Sandi and prized other members of its porfolio. Over the past couple of decades, Prosecco, which is produced primarily in Veneto as well as in smaller areas of the Friuli region, has seen a surge in global popularity. For a sparkling wine to be labeled as Prosecco, it must be made w...

Something for the holidays

Posted on December 27, 2024 by Ellen Wallace

It’s that time of the year again, when after the mad rush, you are hopefully able to finally settle down to a number of days of relative calm. Your thoughts start to turn to wine and which bottles of your stock to sip during the holiday season. Ellen Wallace provides a touching personal reflection, but one that’s relatable to all, of a wine that not only celebrates the memory of a loved one, share...

From the Chair: Critical thinking skills

Posted on December 23, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Meg Maker defends the right to drink and enjoy cheap fizz, even as an esteemed wine writer, in her column this month. I’ve just returned from London, where I used the excuse of the Circle’s annual Festive Party to justify a week of ogling art, meandering markets, visiting old haunts, and eating and drinking across a wet and windy city. My spouse and I had the good fortune to have a friend’s fla...

Sardinia sparkles

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Nicole Wolbers

Nicole Wolbers discovers how the magical Mediterranean island, which is renowned for its centuries-old wine tradition, is preparing for a bubbly future. Sardinia's winemaking history is impressively ancient, dating back to the Nuragic civilization around 1500 BC. Furthermore, recent archaeological findings suggest that Sardinia may be the oldest known wine-producing region in Europe. The Bronze A...

From the Chair: Cheap and expensive wine words

Posted on November 30, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Are we all subconscious marketers? Meg Maker poses the question in her column this month. Making fun of wine tasting notes is not a new sport; recall Thurber’s 1937 cartoon about the “naïve domestic Burgundy.” But academic research about wine tasting notes is much newer, and it’s being done not only by linguists but also by mathematicians, economists, statisticians, and AI modelers. Such quant...

Chile or not Chile: the place of growth question

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Liz Sagues

Liz Sagues, along with a bevy of other experienced communicators and sommeliers, participates in a fascinating tasting hosted by fellow CWW member Tim Atkin MW and Ventisquero winemaker Felipe Tosso, with a scientist also on hand, to explore whether Chilean terroir can in fact be tasted. Is terroir tosh? That, essentially, was the question at 67 Pall Mall in London on 21st November. More specifi...

The tricentennial Bolgheri birthday bash

Posted on November 30, 2024November 30, 2024 by Filippo Magnani

Sitting at a one-kilometer long Super Tuscan table, Filippo Magnani celebrates three decades of the daring DOC, which shook up the wine world for ever, and continues to set the highest of standards. He also gets in a sneak preview of the 2022 vintage. On September 4, 2024, Bolgheri, the small yet iconic wine region on the Tuscan coast, commemorated a significant milestone: 30 years of the Bolgher...

From the Chair: Why keep writing about about wine?

Posted on October 29, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker ponders on what it means to be a 'wine writer' today, in an increasingly challenging professional environment. The Circle is a guild of professionals who’ve earned the moniker ‘wine writer.’ That writing may appear in the form of article, blog, or book, or may be in service of podcast, broadcast, social post, lecture, or curriculum. (And yes, we do have photographers; they ...

Natural Trailblazers should stop us in our tracks

Posted on October 29, 2024October 30, 2024 by Valerie Kathawala

Valerie Kathawala is inspired by Natural Trailblazers, a recently-published book that profiles European winegrowers who are pioneering ways of reducing wine’s environmental impact. She argues that there are implicit lessons about how we wine journalists might rethink approaches to our own work. ‘What guides me is the idea of less,’ says Alsatian winegrower Yannick Meckert. “Less, less, less.” M...