Andrew Jefford

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Andrew Jefford

The taste of wine is the taste of fermented grape juice: diverse, distracting, shockingly beautiful. And there’s more. Wine’s flavours, famously, can convey origin with great precision, though the mechanisms at play resist easy definition. Behind that, underwriting both our understanding of wine regions and the ability of those working in them to prevail on the market, lies history. History is wine’s forgotten ingredient.

2 weeks ago | decanter.com | Andrew Jefford

Is democracy the safest form of government, or might autocracy have its merits? Is prosperity best assured through free-trade, or through protectionism? All urgent questions at present, affecting wine as they affect everything else; the responses are consequential. So much so… that I’ll leave those answers to you. I have a different dichotomy to discuss; it may even be the key question in wine aesthetics. When you treat yourself to a special bottle, what do you hope you’ll find?

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Andrew Jefford

March’s second day this year was a Sunday. My brother and I walked the Sussex South Downs. Almost three months since midwinter, the freshly peeled air drenched the leafless woods and hills with pale light. Yellow crocuses quietly exploded in the grass; the first larks unspooled their ribbon of song above. At lunchtime, we dipped down to the Ram in Firle. We sat at a bare table in its dark, womb-like dining room with our beloved hatchlings: two pints of Harvey’s.

1 month ago | worldoffinewine.com | Andrew Jefford

Andrew Jefford, Susan Hulme MW, and Michael Palij MW look for depth amid the easy charm as they taste the 2020 Barolo vintage. 2020 Barolo: More than comfortable? Poderi Luigi Einaudi Barolo Monvigliero Verduno 2020 (14.5% ABV) |94SH | The color is mid-ruby without any evolution. The nose is softly fragrant and enticing, a hedonistic mix of floral notes, such as iris, violet, and rose, as well as ripe red cherry in alcohol.

1 month ago | decanter.com | Andrew Jefford

There’ll be a snowy photo of the vines in winter, or merry harvesters throwing their baskets in the air, with a scrawled signature. Occasionally I’m sent a list of wines with all the scores obtained in the previous year, like a wonk’s school report; or I get a request for a date – at one of the wine fairs the owners will soon attend. I glance, note… recycle. And then out tumbled this: ‘What I Believe: Welcome to the corner of my consciousness.’ I unfolded the brightly coloured A2 sheet.